I hold my ratsnake quite often, and I check her sheds for completeness. Therefore I feel pretty bad about missing this one. The shed before last I noticed Noodle's very tip of her tail had a bit of extra skin, just the tiniest bit, and I tried to pull it off but it didn't come off. The rest of the tail looked fine to me. I decided not to force it and just left it alone. She shed again a few days ago. I admit I was busy this week and I didn't inspect her or the shed until yesterday, and was horrified to see that her tail looked awful, and the very tip looked dead!I then inspected the shed and found that the tip of the tail skin looked like at least a couple layers had shed at once. I swear I never noticed extra skin that far up after her last shed.
So off we went off to the exotic vet. The vet says the tail tip is still alive for now, just very raw. There is some infection going up towards the body already but not too bad. The vet drew a line around her tail with marker below the infection, and if that gets worse or spreads I need to bring her back immediately.
It does look like she really pulled off a bunch of skin and some scales along with the shed. I am dipping her tail in iodine twice a day and we are watching to see if it dies or not, requiring amputation. It looks better this morning (the infection part) so I'm hopeful the tail can be saved, but only time will tell.
I consider myself a very attentive and good snake owner and we only have 3 snakes in the house. I guess this goes to show it can happen to anyone.
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