Escape and near-tragedy

[Caitlin]

Apologies in advance for a long post.

I haven't posted in about a month, as one of the Children's Pythons that I just love was in a terrible accident and I nearly lost her (I may still), and it's honestly just been too hard to write about. I do think it's important to talk about it as a warning to other keepers.

I recently moved Miso, a one-year-old Children's Python, from a Sterilite tub into a PVC enclosure that has sliding glass door panels. In many years of keeping, I had never had an escape and I wanted to keep it that way - so even though the gap between the sliding glass panels was very small, I added weather stripping to make the gap even smaller. Then I placed Miso in the enclosure and watched her like a hawk. Since Antaresia are curious, I knew she would start exploring right away and I wanted to be certain she couldn't escape. Sure enough, she located the gap and worked hard to try to get through it. After a lot of effort, she couldn't seem to shove even her nose through the gap, so I thought she was secure. I was wrong.

She escaped during the night, crawled under a sliding glass patio door in the room, and the next morning that door was slid open and then closed on top of her. I was sure she was dead, but when I managed to extract her she moved slightly. I thought her spine was broken. I immediately called my vet, but due to COVID they couldn't see me for a week - not even to do the euthanasia I assumed was needed. So I set little Miso up with what I thought would be a peaceful place for her to die. I considered euthanizing her myself but I just couldn't do it (and thank god for that in hindsight) - so I gave her a quiet, warm, dark hide in a small tub, put a shallow water bowl near her head so she wouldn't have to reach far if she wanted it, and left her alone. The next day I went in fully expecting to remove her body, but she had managed to neatly coil herself and lifted her head to look up at me, flicking her tongue. I don't mind confessing that I burst into tears, and I am not a cryer.

Long story short, that little girl has begun to recover. I was finally able to get her to my vet (I am very fortunate in having an excellent reptile vet), who confirmed that her spine is intact, though she has several broken ribs, and she didn't appear to have internal injuries other than severe bruising throughout her body and along the top of her spine. My vet was adamant in feeling Miso has a chance at recovery, so she came home with a month's worth of painkiller/muscle relaxant and antibiotic injections (which she HATES, so that's fun). The vet has emphasized that while snakes have remarkable resilience and recovery capacity, they also heal very slowly, so we are not by any means out of the woods, and have a long road ahead (likely months) before we can be sure she'll be OK.

Two weeks later she crawled out of her hide and soaked herself for an hour in her water bowl. She had a complete shed the next day. Two days after that, she crawled up and out of the enclosure as I was cleaning it. One month after the accident, she ate (I offered her a smaller food item than normal). We're still not sure about her bowel function, so she's getting a warm water soak for 15 minutes every other day. Yesterday she crawled around her tub exploring and burrowed under her water bowl, which required a lot of movement. She's now able to partly curl her tail around my hand, which she was unable to do a month ago. I think Miso just might make it, though every day I half-expect to lose her.

This experience has been horrible. I've of course lost animals to illness or age before, but this is the first time I have been the direct cause of great suffering in an animal I love. I can't forgive myself for it but I can sure as hell do a better job of preventing it - I'll certainly never again trust a sliding door entrance on an enclosure for any snake under 200 grams, even if it seems like there is no way on earth they could fit through the gap. I thought the added weather stripping plus my observation that she couldn't get her nose through the gap were enough. They weren't.

Please send positive thoughts for little Miso, and please don't put anything other than heavy-bodied snakes in sliding front enclosures; put locks on them to prevent doors being pushed open, and double and triple-check and secure every single gap or hole - even if you think escape is impossible - before deciding any enclosure is safe.