Buggsie's (Ongoing) Road to Recovery - A Rescue Story

[Coluber42]

I did notice him flopped over like that in the first day pictures. I don't have any particular thoughts on that or experience to add that you haven't already thought of. But in addition to lacking muscle tone, maybe it's also just that he needs a little more padding on him to fill him out to where his body rests in the normal position?
Anyway, I love following his story and I would love to keep seeing photos of Buggsie even if he gets pleasingly plump! It's so nice to see him making progress!

I did have one comment to add about how quickly he went from being limp and listless to having more energy and behaving a little more like he should. This may sound a little out in left field, but I think maybe it isn't too far off the mark.

I do a lot of long distance cycling events - many of them 24 hours or over, sometimes a lot over. You have some short pit stops, and maybe you take naps, but you mostly keep riding straight through. The biggest thing you have to worry about when you do that is fueling yourself. While you're riding, you basically have to keep averaging a certain number of calories per hour (between 200 and 400, depending on your size, how tolerant your stomach is, the weather, lots of things...); not to mention water and electrolytes (primarily sodium - that's the one that will get you into real trouble the fastest). Getting behind on calories is known as "bonking" and it is not fun. Really, if you get behind on any of that stuff (food, water, sodium), you just feel like something limp scraped off the bottom of a boot. No energy, no will. Everything hurts. You might start crying for no reason without even feeling like you're upset, or you might start snapping at people, or you might just not say anything even when people ask you questions. But basically, you feel like Buggsie looked in that first picture.

Needless to say, this is not good and you really, really want to avoid it. People devise all sorts of strategies for keeping track of calories, etc. But occasionally, you run out of food on the bike and it's hotter than you expected and then you take a wrong turn or it turns out to be hillier than you thought, etc, and it takes you longer to reach the next gas station convenience store than you thought, and by the time you get there you're running on empty. But the amazing thing is how much better you feel, and how quickly it can happen, when you finally do get some food in. You still have zero reserves, and if you don't keep eating and drinking as much as you can get down, you're going to be right back to feeling like crap. But just that first little bit makes such a huge difference. The aches and pains go away, you feel like you can enjoy life and look at the scenery again.

Obviously this is different because it's a short term athletic event as opposed to long-term starvation; you can be chubby and still bonk, because your body can't utilize stored fat all that quickly. And it's also different because Buggsie is a snake, not a bicyclist; and because a bicyclist or other endurance athlete does what they're doing by choice and Buggsie didn't have a choice.

But all that is to say, I think I can relate to how quickly and how much better he started feeling once he started eating more. It just makes me all the more glad to see things looking up for him.