Crap!! What just happened!!@!$@#

[AkHerps]

Holy crap, I feel like I just had a heart attack. For those of you who don't know who Petrie is, he is my little hatchling who hasn't eaten for the two months I had him, and finally had his first meal last week. He hasn't moved since then, I checked on him once, he seemed fine, nice and warm, just not active. It was a week tonight, so I thought, let's see. Got the same size small mouse, threw it in with him, he nailed it within a minute! Awesome! All is well! No....all went really bad. He got the mouse down, but had a crap load of trouble with the, and I'm going to be graphic, mouse balls and back feet.

But he got it down, then, he starts freaking out. He's waving his face in the air, smacking it into things, he is going insane. I look at his jaws, which are almost down his throat and twisted over eachother. His windpipe is hanging out one corner and he's flailing around, trying to yawn but can't at all. I start freaking out, I run upstairs and get the son of the family I live with, wake him up, it's 3:30am here. We give it 10 minutes, he's still freaking out, he's going really limp and getting really tired and basically hardly moving. We stuck on some latex gloves, and I very, very carefully, pushed the jaws out of his throat, and untwisted them, and he yawned and realigned them.

What just happened!!!#!!@#@!$ He is weak and tired right now, he didn't throw up the mouse on us, and he's right about to shed, his eyes are completely clouded over.

But again, what the heck just happened!!! It was the same size as his first mouse which he ate just fine, but the first was a female. I know, I can't get fuzzy's and hopper's, but these are small mice, they are the size of him at the thickest part. I'm not feeding him full adults, these are still basically baby's, just past the hopper stage by a couple weeks.

How do I prevent this, he was freaking out really hardcore and I don't want him going through that again!!

Thanks for any and all help!!

[CamStatic]

Wow, I've never heard of anything like that.
Try feeding it smaller mice? Since he had troubles with the last part of swallowing?

[sho220]

Wow...that's pretty crazy. Good job on helping him out. Lots of people start hatchlings out on small mice. I've started most of mine out on them and never have had a problem. It may just be a fluke thing??? It was probably the last thing on your mind but I wish you had snapped a pic. I'm having touble picturing what you described. Give him time to recover and digest and try again. If you can, try to pick out the smallest mice. Both "pet stores" I go to for mice are good about picking out the small ones when I ask.

[Brstin2flames]

Omg!! That's insane...I haven't had any problems like that with my young BP. You did a great job figuring out what to do, I don't know if I would have been able to think clearly in that situation! I would have been so scared for my little guy!

[twan]

WOW that's crazy good jumping right in there in the heat of the moment.

[tiny_tiger60978]

Congrats on helping him out, but sorry BOTH of yall had to go though that...Hope it was just a fluke and he's alright!

[reggi-BP]

the mouse was a lil to big for him probably but hell i havent even got mine to eat but next time u try since hes eating a f/t but i doubt it ill get a live one for mine an prays he eats

[AkHerps]

I'm going to try and find the smallest mouse I can. Our only pet store is Petco...T_T...which killed all of our other awesome pet stores which sold live fuzzies and hoppers a couple years ago...Petco gets their shipments of mice in on Wednesdays, which happens to be Petrie's feeding day, so I'm going to go every wednesday and try ad get their smallest mice, which they usually keep in the back.

Just leave the live mouse in his tank for an hour plus and he will probably get the idea.

[JibbaJabba]

Just leave the live mouse in his tank for an hour plus and he will probably get the idea.

I have two faunariums from exo terra where I keep a hatchling in:



The great thing about it is that a third can be seperated with some plastic divider so you can leave the mouse in the same enclosure which then will smell quite good (especially males) and then you can remove the divider once you want to supervise the feed.

I am talking about the PT2310 here btw. - the large one with two openings