Did I RIP his skin!?

[bretvaldez]

HELP!!!!

I have a 12 year old ball python whom I’ve had for 5 years. I adopted him after my friend’s mother passed away, leaving all her snakes behind, but this was her baby, and I promised I’d take care of him.

When I first got him, he had a respiratory infection, and I got that taken care of right away, and I haven’t had any problems there since.

However, as of late, some strange things have been happening. First of all, he has puked up 3 of his 6 mice in the past couple months... this was after one feeding. So I then got him a medium rat to eat 2 weeks later, and he ate it fine. Recently, I got him 4 mice, and I came into his room to see if he was ready to go back in his home (I feed him in a separate tank so he doesn’t get any of the bedding in him), I noticed the last mouse was still sitting in this mouth, and down his throat. Worried, thinking he was dead, I went to move him, but he reacted, to my relief... so I pulled the mouse out and threw it away... I don’t know if he had puked it or never was able to swallow it.

Anyway, my buddy (His name is Artemus) has never been a good shedder. He’s always need a soak or someone’s assistance in pulling off his shed. I’ve only seen him shed fully on his own once. I typically let him use the pieces in his terrarium to shed most of it off, but I usually have to take a pair of tweezers and pull the shedding out of his heat pits and his eyes. Don’t worry - I’m very gentle and have a delicate touch, and have had years of practice at doing this, and was instructed by a vet to do this. He always holds still and allows me to do this, knowing it will help him.

However, I noticed he still had very much shedding to do along the length of his body, so I began to gently peel away flakes of shed, until eventually, one, that apparently WASN’T shed!?, peeled off (just as easily as a shed) and underneath was a milky white... "skin".... did I accidentally rip his skin off!??! And if so, how do I fix that, and what could have caused it???

I cannot afford a vet bill at the moment... He did not make any movement to suggest what I’d just done had hurt him... but I am worried something is wrong with him if his actual skin can so easily be ripped...

Any advice or help would be SO appreciated. Thanks in advance.


ETA: I wasn't using the tweezers when this occurred, just my hands