Trying to figure out cause of death..

[ayonae]

I was heartbroken today to find my beautiful ball out of her little house and crumpled up into a strange position. My heart sank as soon as I saw her and I knew she had died. I have only had her for 2 years and she was my very first snake. I adored her and expected to have her for many years to come. I am crushed by this sudden surprise to the contrary.

Now I'm trying to figure out why. I thought this would be a good place to ask and see what people's opinions are. So, I will post all of the facts and relevant info I can pertaining to her. Thank you for any input/feedback.

- I adopted her 2 years ago from a teacher who said she had been used as a breeder snake for a few years because of her beautiful patterns. She wasn't sure exactly how old she was, but said probably around 6-8 yrs old.
- She ate frozen - small rats, or large mice if I had trouble getting rats. She was a bit fussy sometimes and didn't always take it, but most of the time she did, and always ate between 4-6 weeks in spring/summer/fall... and every 2-3 mo in winter
- I never saw her drink water in the entire time I had her. I would even put her in the water to encourage her to drink, but she never appeared to do so.
- I took her to a specialty vet when I first acquired her, who said she looked healthy, maybe slightly overweight.

There are only 2 things I can think of that would explain her sudden passing. (Don't BP's normally live 20-30+ yrs??)

I rescued another snake this past November, a red tail boa. This snake had been neglected and the cage was so filthy, it had bugs crawling in it. I was afraid the snake had parasites, so I cleaned the cage and kept her away from my BP. There was one day, back in December, that I handled them both. The red tail I handled first, and after putting her back, I washed my hands before picking up the BP. But is it possible I somehow could have transferred an illness to her? This was many months ago, but it was a thought.

The other probable cause (and this is what I truly suspect did her in) is that approximately 5-6 weeks ago, she experienced an extreme, prolonged drop in temperature. I live in Massachusetts, and we had a bitterly cold winter this year. One of the nights, unbenownst to me, my power had gone out, and it was out all night. I panicked immediately upon waking because I'd always been nervous about this very thing happening and killing her. When I ran to her cage and felt her, she was ice cold. I thought then that she had surely not survived, but after picking her up, her muscles reacted ever so slightly. I held her under my shirt against my bare skin to warm her up. I had never seen her so tightly balled up. It took about 20 minutes, but she eventually came out of her deep freeze like state and started moving normally again. I estimated that she had been in this state at least 6-8 hours before I found her. After she warmed up, I put her in a bath of warm water, which she seemed to enjoy.

I took her out of the water after about 15 minutes, and put her in her portable carry bin, on top of a warm water bottle, as it was still cold in my house. I checked on her a half hour later and found that she had defecated in the bin, which I thought was a little strange because I had fed her over a week prior to then, and assumed she would have passed it before then. I took her out of the bin to clean that up, and carried her around with me to keep her warm.
About 30 minutes afterwards, as I was holding her, noticed she was making an odd movement with her tail. Before I knew it what was happening, her tail kind of opened up and liquid starting pouring out of it. I then realized she was peeing (or so I thought... although in my reading I always got the impression urine came out with feces as more of a congealed substance like bird poop) .... a decent sized puddle of urine, or whatever this fluid was, came out of her... and then as I looked down again I saw her start to pass more feces. This all happened so quickly while I was holding her I simply took her to the hallway that had a hardwood floor so the feces could fall onto that and be easily cleaned up. The feces was solid and brown. It looked normal. (The feces in the first series of poop a half hour earlier was brown and had white in it, again, looked normal.)
I put her back in her carry bin to clean up the mess, all the while getting a sort of uneasy feeling about it. She had never done anything like this. I also thought it was strange that she defecated twice in such a short time. I had the thought that maybe she hadn't had a bowel movement since the feeding a month before her last. Either way, she seemed pretty messed up; I assumed from the traumatic experience she'd just had.

I kept a close eye on her over the next few days, but she was acting normally. I assumed she recovered from the experience.

About 2 weeks ago - making it approximately 1 month since this occurred, we had another freakishly cold night, and again, the power was out. I freaked out again knowing that she had just had a near-death experience barely a month beforehand and was probably still weak from that. It was nowhere near as cold this time, and not as many hours had passed. She was cold when I picked her up, but she responded pretty normally unlike the first time around.

I tried feeding her about 1 week ago and she had trouble seeing the mouse and wouldn't take it after awhile, though she did strike at it a couple of times. (not the first time it's happened, there have been a handful of times over the last 2 years where she's done this) so I didn't think anything of it.

Today I found her dead.

Her water bowl had been empty, however, her bowl had often been empty for a few days at a time while I've traveled, because it evaporated from the heat underneath, and it's never been an issue. I also read that BP's don't need to drink as much as some other breeds, because I'd been worried about her lack of water intake in the past.


Is it possible that her immune system or her heart weakened after experiencing the extreme cold overnight, and that the second round of cold weather was too much for her to handle? Is it possible she somehow caught a disease from the other snake? (I have since given that snake away as it became apparent she was very aggressive.) Is it possible that she was lacking nutrients because the last couple of feedings have been large mice and not small rats? Could she have become sick from not having a bowel movement for an extended period of time? Is it possible it was just her time, even though she wasn't very old? Do snakes used for breeding have shorter lifespans?

I'm just so distraught and saddened by this.... I feel so terrible. She was such a sweet, gentle little girl. Was not ready for this to happen so soon at all.

Thank you for any replies/theories.

[magicmed]

Sadly, the only way you're going to know for sure is a test. Anything else is just gonna be speculation, Out of curiousity, was he wheezing/whistling before he passed? That could be a symptom of an RI, but I don't know if it would advance that quickly without you noticing.

[bcr229]

Determining the cause of death would require a necropsy. Put her in the refrigerator - not the freezer - until you can take her to the vet. We can speculate but there's no way to know what went wrong.

All that said since you're in MA and a power outage = no heat, you need to get some sort of emergency heat before next winter. I feel your pain here, our infrastructure in WV is bad enough that an ice storm can knock out power for days, so we have a generator and wood stove.

[ayonae]

I have buried her already... she's been in the ground since last night. Is it too late to dig her up now?

[ayonae]

I didn't notice any wheezing, but then I hadn't paid her much attention the last few days. She usually just stayed inside her little house a lot..

[bcr229]

I honestly don't know if it's too late or not, decomp starts pretty quickly after death and the one time I had a necropsy done the body was at the vet's office within an hour.

[Albert Clark]

I have buried her already... she's been in the ground since last night. Is it too late to dig her up now?

Sad and so sorry for your loss. Imo, since you have already buried her don't exhume her. Chalk it up as a learning experience and move on. You are now better prepared and have gained experience. Stay in peace and not pieces.