My friend's first ball python, an '09 spider female from J Kobylka, died last night. As far as we could tell it was 100% healthy when we got her in. The hot spot was 90, the cool spot 75, the ambient temperature was 80. She was misted every day, the humidity bounced around from 70% to 45% right before misting. My friend loved this animal and her care was meticulous, this really shouldn't have happened.

She was showing obvious signs of an RI for the past week or so, so my friend took her to the vet 3 days ago and spent over 400 bucks for tests and the medicine. My friend was told to soak her for 20 minutes every day and inject the antibiotics every 72 hours. The next day she got a call from the vet who said the anti-biotic was the right one and the snake's future looked good.

Last night while soaking her, the snake started convulsing, wheezing, and emptying the contents of its stomach. She went limp and stopped breathing, but came back again. My friend made me come over because she was so traumatized. I told her I'd read about another person's snake doing the same thing because of constipation, but I wasn't sure because I hadn't seen it happen. I left and a few hours later, the snake was dead.

She only had her for about 6 months. I feel so guilty because I encouraged her to get a snake in the first place and introduced her to ball pythons. RIP Spiffy :'-(