Ugh.. I think she's sick

[satomi325]

Not my fault if the animal came sick from the place I got it, now is it?
Should have taken her to the vet 2 weeks ago. Agreed. I said as much in an earlier post. Hindsight is 20/20. Do you want me to commit seppuku for not having done something I probably should have? Did anyone recommend in the other thread that I should take her to the vet? No. So that hindsight = 20/20 applies to everyone who got worked up over the separation issue. Everyone was too blinded by the fact they were living together to see that just maybe she was really sick and needed to be seen by a vet.

Nobody mentioned anything about a vet visit because 90% of the time, a husbandry change will solve everything.
Your snake could have come to you sick, but maybe it didn't. Housing her with the male in a bearded dragon set up certainly didn't help her get better if she was sick in the first place. It probably made her worse.
Any kind of stress on a reptile is HUGE. It's not like stress on humans or mammals. Reptile stress can lower it's immune system and make it more susceptible to illness and/or infection.

Agreed. Which is why I give all my animals a clean and appropriate environment. And if I don't know how or have questions, I go looking for the right answers. Hence, why I am here. But to tell you the truth I have spent more time here explaining my personal decisions than I have learning anything new.

Last time I looked, housing 2 mite infested snakes together in a dragon set up isn't clean, nor appropriate....But it sounds like that's all solved except for the egg crate thing. But we all said enough about that. So moving on.

Why does your snake care sheet list glass enclosures as one of the acceptable living quarters for a ball python if it is, in fact, so frowned upon? Maybe you should file a complaint with the board moderators instead of trying to convince me that I suck. lol!

Glass enclosures are FINE. But tubs work very well as a temporary set up or a quarantine enclosure until your girl gets better. You even mentioned you couldn't use the other tanks in your house, so we suggested a very cheap and easy solution.

Like we all mentioned before, separating a sick animal should be your first priority in order to keep your male healthy. Why leave him in the same enclosure with the sick female? The egg crate does NOTHING to keep pathogens from going through. You need a solid barrier at the very very least. What if your female was contagious? Your male could have caught whatever she had. Then you would have to treat another animal and pay double for the vet bill. Twice the bill, double the effort in caring for a sick animal, and double the heart ache if both died.

Lol, stress is a healthy (yes, healthy) thing. But don't take my word for it, look it up yourself. It's "too much" stress that is bad. When it starts to affect your health and makes you age prematurely. Maybe another mistake I have made is to assume you can read between the lines and could tell what I meant. Sorry, next time I'll spell things out like you're a 6 year old.

Ok. Stress on you may be alright. But as everyone mentioned, your priority should be on your current animals. You want to help animals. I like people who try to help animals. But you contradict yourself so much with that statement .You said you want to foster to help those birds. Well, you're not helping out your current sick animals by putting your time and energy into the potential new animals.

On average, it takes snakes a decent amount of time to recover fully from being ill.
They're not like mammals where they bounce back within a week. Treating your snake can take anywhere from a few weeks to months.
That puts stress on your snake.
Like I mentioned before, stress promotes a lowered immune system in snakes. First, you housed both of your snakes together. Yes they're physically 'separated' now, but you can bet that being together before was probably stressful for them too. Snakes sharing an enclosure are constantly fighting for dominance of the best spot in the cage(often mistaken as cuddling).

Second, your snakes are still recovering from mites. That alone is pretty stressful.

And now your girl is in critical condition. All that stress adds up to a majorly sick snake.

So all in all, your snake could have come to you sick. But with everything I mentioned above, it certainly made things much worse.

Please don't take any of this the wrong way. This is a great forum. The members here are very experienced and knowledgeable. They're all giving very good advice to improve the well being of your animals.

Lastly, I'm sorry if I sounded harsh or mean in this post. I just got frustrated from reading all the back and forth bickering.