...ALL in the space of a week

I have to say it's not been the best week for poor Munch

First off we had his regurgitation last week. Sorted that out and taking the necessary measures to make sure he recovers nicely.

His shed seemed to be going nicely. Until last night. I got home from dropping Grant back at his house and immediately he calls me, in a complete panic. He went to check on Munch, his water etc... and lo and behold he was covered in "little black things running all over him".

:

Neither of us have dealt with mites. Pretzels never had them and he sounded so panicked, I literally chucked a whole roll of kitchen towel into my bag, and bombed it back there. Poor Munch was tense, rubbing himself on his bark hide thingy I got him out and looked him over. There were some mites - not quite as many as Grant had initially thought - and he was rubbing himself on any coarse surface available.

I had no idea what to do, there's no internet there and it was gone past any reasonable time to ring someone.
*sigh*

He got a bit of a soak, but was stressing beyond belief so was literally in the water for about 5 minutes. We cleared everything out of the vivarium and put him in his tub on towels. He seemed to calm down.

Woke up this morning and he's shed...mostly. Unfortunately it's all in tiny pieces. Could only find one half of his head shed... But when I checked him over, he's definitely got rid of the other half, I'll just have to look more. It looks like he's shed everything apart from the first third of his underbelly. I've let him run through a warm damp towel but (being Munch) he just curled up and went to sleep...

*sigh* So I went to the reptile store as soon as I could and got Callingtons which is apparently, according to the owner, like "napalm". Also this stuff called F10. Got instructions on how to use it all so Operation Mite Obliteration is a-go-go.

This has not been a good snake week for me. We're keeping everything, including ourselves, clean as possible.



And to top it all off - I fell in love with a Male Pastel today, and only £129.
*double sigh*

Any advice on Dos and Donts on mites would be greatly appreciated.

Also, Can anyone tell me about the pros and cons of Olive Oil and snakes?

AND a massive thank you to h00blah for your e-mail last night