First off, my normal vet is closed, I don't even know if they treat snakes, but there's an exotic vet downtown I'm calling in the morning.

Okay, with that out of the way, hello, first time BP owner, love my Tim(my little Enchi BP). Not 100% sure about his age I got him from a friend at work, he came to me super healthy, nice and thick, strong wrapping himself around my wrist and fingers, good snake, felt like a good animal bright and curious. She gave me 3 rats to take home, told me to get a 50gal tank, either paper towels or carpeting(absolutely no substrate), two hides, a UTH, dimmer switch, temp and humidity monitor and a big bowl for his water. Okay! No problem! Went through two monitors but finally got one that worked. Sent her photos of his habitat, she loved it felt good about everything. Asked when I should feed him, she tells me leave him alone for a couple weeks, it won't hurt him to miss a meal, okay no problem. I picked him up 11/27 and offered him one rat a week after that, he wouldn't take it for ANYTHING. That's okay, I'll try again at another time. Saturday the 12th he took a rat, missed his first strike, but got it the second time. The friend told me he didn't like it wiggled and to just set it down in front of him. Huzzah! He eats! I watched him eat, he spent 45 minutes struggling to find the nose but he found it eventually, as I was watching him eat I got a little worried that the rat might've been too big, thought about trying to take it back, thought that was stupid, didn't remember the rat being that big when I pulled it out of the freezer maybe it expanded when I heated it up by pouring hot water over it in a plastic bag. I asked her, she told me the rats she gave me were okay. Alright, fine I'll stop worrying. Read to leave the snake alone and not handle him for 2-3 days after eatting, okay I can do that too. Slid him very gently from his feeding container back into his tank after he ate. As far as I could tell the rat was way down into midsection and all went well. He slithered happily off to his bigger hide on top of the UTH and I went to sleep.

Kept peeking at him through the hole on his big hide over the next couple days, changing his water out everyday, noticed a strange smell, at first thought it was my dogs, bathed them but smell was still there, searched everywhere but finally ended up at his cage. It. Was. Awful. Smelled like death, was immediately terrified he'd died somehow, so I went and grabbed a plastic container and pulled up his big tree hide and found him laying half on top of a puddle vaguely resembling a rat and a big bulge in his throat.

PANIC ENSUED.

Picked him up as gently as I could, set him in his container, called the friend and she came over immediately. I cleaned his cage out, scrubbed everything, the carpeting is hung in the bathroom drying and she has him and is feeling the big lump in his throat. There's brown grey sludge coming up out of his throat and she's taking ear swabs and cleaning it up with a flashlight in her mouth trying to see what's in there, she thinks it's a skull or bone fragments. Next thing I know she has tweezers, his mouth way open and is slowly pulling shards of bone out of his throat. He is clearly unhappy but after five minutes she gets the bulge of I'm guessing rot out of his throat and cleans him up. I had put paper towels as flooring in his cage while the carpeting dries and she dips his chin in his water bowl and sets him down. Tim drank for five minutes and then scurried off to his UTH hide.

She has no idea why he threw up or how stuff got stuck in his throat, says he felt dehydrated, skin loose a little, but it wasn't life threatening and to just keep an eye on him. She says maybe the rat I gave him was too big, she'll give me smaller ones next time but is still really confused.

So, my question to you guys, was what she did pulling the stuff out of his throat okay? And any idea what happened? Was his rat too big? I'm crazy worried.

I was too busy panicing to take a picture of him with his throat bulge but I do have a photo of when I got him, him eatting the rat and then after his whole ordeal.






https://i.imgur.com/uQ0z0kV.jpg (This ended up being a huge picture)