So, I've been keeping ball pythons for five years now and knock wood - have never had a RI in my collection.

I had a friend over last evening, who I haven't seen in YEARS and come to find out - he loves snakes, so he was enjoying my collection and wanted to see a few feedings. I happened to have a breeder female rat that had developed a tumor and so I fed her off to one of my largest females.

We came back later in the evening and he wanted to see her lump, so I take the hide off of her, and I notice that her paper has a few drops of liquid under her mouth.

I freak! I pick her up gently supporting her body and liquid comes POURING out of her mouth. I'm like CRAP! How the heck did she get an RI? And one this bad??? But she's not wheezing, she's not rattling in her lungs, and she's not open mouth breeding, she's just looking at me like I've lost my mind while she's continuing to drool all over the place.

Another reason I freaked is that she JUST finished breeding with Winston a few days ago.

So I tell my friend, I'm really hoping she just had a drink of water before we got her out - I'm just going to check her in the morning and get a vet appointment on Monday if she's still doing this. Of course, we stopped all handling of other critters (I had not handled her before we handled the other animals last evening, thank goodness!).

Checked her as soon as I got up this morning - and dry as can be - nothing coming from her mouth, opened her mouth, nice and clean, no bubbles, and I even tilted her down a bit to see if anything would dribble out - nada. Still breathing normally, no whistling, no deep chest rattling, no open mouth breathing. WHEW! She must have had a long drink before we checked on her.

At least for now, I can continue to say - no RI's in my collection!