If power goes out, how do I heat my BP's enclosure?

[ballpythonluvr]

It is a very justified worry. I am going to elaborate on Deborahs post and suggest a thought process, rather than how to.

The answer is different for everyone, conditions and budget will make great impact.

Think in stages, often power failures fall into three types short term hours not days, a day or two, and then catastrophic.

Short term solutions maybe as simple as placing a good insulator over the enclosure. This may buy you two or three hours of acceptable ambients (74 being the cool end of normal and 70 being tolerable for a short term below starts to get to be a problem.)

After just insulating stars to be an issue I then remove the snake and place the animal in a smaller lower vented container with a warm water bottle (if you still can heat water! I have a Bbq) of a chemical heat pad. (remember they use oxygen so they need more air flow and some get very hot and the snake needs to be protected from the surface) If the smaller container is placed inside something like a stryofoam cooler (with some vent holes) it holds heat longer. That often will buy 24 hours more if you have a handful of chemical heat packs or multiple water bottles.

Over a really long term is where things get quite dicey. You are actually likely to be having serious issues as well. I have spend 7 days with no power and stranded once. It goes from an inconvenience, to a pain, to an serious survival situation fairly fast, the first 72 hours in my case. This is the point where the supplies you need and the snake need start to dwindle. Snake bag and snake kept under your cloths might be the only method. But to in a catastrophic power failure it is quite possible that the animal may not make it, if you are cold and have not eaten in days and can go to a emergency shelter but not take the snake you may well have to leave it behind. Sad but your well being may need to come first. Luckily things rarely get that bad.

Things to I plan, check the weather, if there is a big storm predicted and it is cold outside skip a feeding. Snakes 'empty' tolerate a wider temperature range than 'full' and cope with stresses better. Heat water I actually use a product called a 'snuggle safe' and when a storm starts I heat them in case. Make sure you have things like a little cooler with some vent holes in it, a snake bag, chemical heat pads, what ever else you may need. Do a dry run, take you emergency system somewhere cool (basement or porch someplace.) stick a thermometer with hi low recording inside and you heat method a see what happens so you have a sense of how long it can hold for.

Think in stages, stage one 24 hours most grid issues are repaired inside this. 72 hours the serious storms may slow down the repair process. longer is massive damage and not only the snake may need rescuing you may as well, it is impossible/difficult to plan for.

This is all good information. Last February we had a pretty bad ice storm that knocked trees down along with the power wires and we did not have power for four days straight. Luckily I did not have any snakes at the time. We could not get our house temperature above 50 degrees. We had a kerosene heater but it did not do much for the temps. We have electric heat and our water is well water so we didn't even have any water. It was so rough. I have a dog and a cat and it was pretty hard on them as well.