snake went missing for 3 weeks now wont eat

[tizzle89]

alright i have about a year n half old.. maybe i got him from petco and he pretty much was 3 feet and now is at 4 or 5. never had any issues with him very smart n active. loves to eat very gentle loves his scales rubbed. i used to use a glass cage with a screen lock top.. the ppl on this site side go with rubber maid is way better lol. well rubber made tops warp from constant heat it seems lol. his hiddles in the lid can be lift up very easy now from almost a year of use. thats how it got out. i live in alaska and atm its 10 degrees outside and about 50 to 45 in the floor boards < where he was. i knew this and left him his water bowl n a hide for him. well today when i was chilling playing a game on my laptop i heard some ... snake movement lol it wasnt clumbsy like a ferret but more like a hunting stalking lol so i got up n wow a very very VERY cold snake.. cold enough to burn my forarm . if i had to ges he was at maybe 40 degrees. anyways i went and bought him 3 mice within 15 mins of finding him when i left i let him sit in his cage at 83 air temp so probs about 90 atleast on the ground. i did slowly warm him with my arms and when i went to fix up his cage my wife took him to her chest... his fav place lol ahaha. anyways he wont eat he seems very weak and.. paranoid even tryd to drown himself he sat face in the water bowl for 5 secs till i drug him out. dunno if he went into hybornation or what since i read somewhere u can drop there temp to 55 and not feed or water them for a few months to prepare them for maiting... or something like that. lmk if he is alright or should i vet him n have him lookd at

[dsirkle]

He is not likely to eat when he is too cold to digest his prey. Leave him alone for a couple of days so he can lose his stress and get to a good body temp and see if he eats then.
I would guess that he will be fine if you try that.

[tizzle89]

He is not likely to eat when he is too cold to digest his prey. Leave him alone for a couple of days so he can lose his stress and get to a good body temp and see if he eats then.
I would guess that he will be fine if you try that.

well never to good at waiting and i think i got worried for nothing anyways. he has never been stressed out imo till when i found him its 2.40 am atm i found him at 7 30 pm i just tryd to feed him after a good rubbing so i drop i mouse in and he seems all its w.e till it started to climb on him lol then her sd up n the mouse moved away so i tryd to push it with a fork n he striked at me.. so i think hes feeling better.. and he kept looking at me when the mouse was in front so i think he wants to do this 1 alone lol. thnks ill post bak if he fails to eating

[Jeo123]

well never to good at waiting and i think i got worried for nothing anyways. he has never been stressed out imo till when i found him its 2.40 am atm i found him at 7 30 pm i just tryd to feed him after a good rubbing so i drop i mouse in and he seems all its w.e till it started to climb on him lol then her sd up n the mouse moved away so i tryd to push it with a fork n he striked at me.. so i think hes feeling better.. and he kept looking at me when the mouse was in front so i think he wants to do this 1 alone lol. thnks ill post bak if he fails to eating

Struggling to get through your lack of letters in your post(punctuation and whole words help a lot) but that aside...

You've got a snake that was just at 40 degrees who is obviously weak. He isn't eating, and you want to consider leaving him alone with a live mouse?

If he's not going to eat, take the food back and as the other poster said, WAIT! Your snake needs time to get back to a normal body temperature and stress level before he'll eat. Trying to get him to eat now is just going to end up bad.

[tizzle89]

Struggling to get through your lack of letters in your post(punctuation and whole words help a lot) but that aside...

You've got a snake that was just at 40 degrees who is obviously weak. He isn't eating, and you want to consider leaving him alone with a live mouse?

If he's not going to eat, take the food back and as the other poster said, WAIT! Your snake needs time to get back to a normal body temperature and stress level before he'll eat. Trying to get him to eat now is just going to end up bad.

and once again i have proved this site wrong lol. my snake is named izzy for a reason izual a fallen angel lol he may be weak but once i rubbed him up n let the mouse loose again in his cage he struck at me for trying to take it away and toyed with it for 20 mins till finally killing with perfection and eating it. lol i dont know if i have a freak of nature snake but he loves being touched and doesnt stay in his hides allllllllllllllllll the time lol anyways hes fine and im now looking into a albin burmees just gotta call the guy n see if he can live off nothing but chickens n maybe a small pig every now n then live of course anyways thnks for trying to help i gess he just needed 5 hours to get settled in rather then days? i think alot of you baby your snakes to much since my wifes cousin lost hers in her house for 4 months and... it was found alive.

[sarahlovesmiike]

Way to be kinda rude when everyone was giving you good advice. I'm glad your snake ate, but that doesn't mean they were wrong. Some snakes are more easily stressed than others.

[Jeo123]

People who come to forums asking for advice, then generally saying they're going to ignore the advice and actually seek to "prove the site wrong" do not belong on the forum to begin with.

Seriously, why are you even posting here if your only goal is to prove the advice wrong.

If a snake is not eating, leaving it alone with live prey is a bad idea. That's just common sense. Your example is the same as saying you left a baby on the counter next to a hot oven and saying look, it didn't burn itself. You can only pull that trick so many times before something goes wrong. It may not have ended badly this time, but that still doesn't mean it was the best thing to do.

And for what it's worth, generally a BP that's escaping and doesn't stay in it's hide means it's a stressed snake.

Edit: Also, I'm guessing that since you watched it and tried to steal it's food(he struck at me for trying to take it away ) you didn't leave it alone anyway, which was my main point.

[tizzle89]

People who come to forums asking for advice, then generally saying they're going to ignore the advice and actually seek to "prove the site wrong" do not belong on the forum to begin with.

Seriously, why are you even posting here if your only goal is to prove the advice wrong.

If a snake is not eating, leaving it alone with live prey is a bad idea. That's just common sense. Your example is the same as saying you left a baby on the counter next to a hot oven and saying look, it didn't burn itself. You can only pull that trick so many times before something goes wrong. It may not have ended badly this time, but that still doesn't mean it was the best thing to do.

And for what it's worth, generally a BP that's escaping and doesn't stay in it's hide means it's a stressed snake.

Edit: Also, I'm guessing that since you watched it and tried to steal it's food(he struck at me for trying to take it away ) you didn't leave it alone anyway, which was my main point.

its not my goal to prove ya all wrong.. its just what happens everyone on here seems to take un needed precautions. look at it like this guys. the snake is in the wild right.. and oh no theres no humans to make sure his natural prey doesnt eat him? lol i have left live food in his cage for a year now sometimes 2 to 3 live mice.. he eats them all 1 by 1 with no damage to him. and when i give him his small rat i ensure he gets a hold of it proper and i hold its back legs to stop it from ripping his scales of. and it just seems the advice you all give are a text book omg i just got a new baby and i MUST BABY IT FOR EVER hes a 3 n a half foot snake pretty much pure muscle made to do what i let it do.. my qwestion was simply do you guys think he will be ok after that long of a cold snap.. it was answered simple yes. but to make him wait a few days to see if hes ready to eat? why not just drop a mouse in the cage and see if he takes interest? anyways bigger thinks going on since now he makes a wheezing sound.. its not bad and there is no excess spit on his mouth so.. its a multi of things that can be wrong lol he may has ingested fiber glass and if that happened well... anyways and about the baby thing.. is a stove a natural prey item to it? or a natural habitat? nah i didnt think so lol so when ya got a better.. comparasent ill actual take a note

[Swingline0.0.1]

I can not make heads or tails of half of what you're saying. People are only trying to help. If the snake eats, but it is still stressed, then it might regurge. Then you have another problem. Impatience is not usually the best way.

[anatess]

its not my goal to prove ya all wrong.. its just what happens everyone on here seems to take un needed precautions. look at it like this guys. the snake is in the wild right.. and oh no theres no humans to make sure his natural prey doesnt eat him? lol i have left live food in his cage for a year now sometimes 2 to 3 live mice.. he eats them all 1 by 1 with no damage to him.

Bad analogy. In the wild, the mouse/rat can run off and so can the snake. When you put both in a rubber maid container, they're both trapped and can do unpredictable things.

It's fine if you want to do things your way. I've done that too. The way we keep our snakes is to follow proven methods so that we can keep from having a gigantic vet bill later. Yes, we baby our snakes because well, they're our pets and they're completely dependent on our care. If it happens that we have to spend $1,000 on the vet, we are going to have to cough up the money. Some people won't. Lots of members on this forum will, though.

On the warped rubber maid lid... Do you use a ceramic heat lamp or some other heat source on top of the container? If so, this might be too hot for the heat tolerance of rubber maids being that you're starting off from a very low room temperature setting and have to produce so much heat on the lid to raise ambient temps inside the container. If you're using heat mats under the container, the lid shouldn't warp. It might just be that you need some kind of a bungee cord or something to wrap around your rubber maid. I know that I have to put a hook on the lids when I used a Sterilite container as the lid is made of flimsy material.

You might want to look into Really Useful Box (RUB) which has a more robust lid than rubber maids or sterilites or look into a wooden vivarium.

Just a suggestion.