P-A-M poisoning

[67temp]

Bogertophis

OMG, what a horrible experience, & so easy for others to replicate accidentally: I mean, raise your hand if your snakes never spill their water bowls?

Thank you for sharing this, and I really hope your little IJ makes a full recovery. Lucky you found her when you did...

Maybe this is a dumb question, but how could this have been avoided? You followed directions, cages were fully dry, & snakes do spill their water. Many
say they pre-treat their cages to avoid mite out-breaks, so I'm surprised this doesn't actually happen more often?

All I can think of is that with new acquisitions you should offer water daily+ with supervision & keep the bowl out of the cage until you can wash the
P-A-M out of the cage entirely? -like once you're sure there's no mites?

Those are all very good questions. I have to wonder if having some type of substrate other than paper towels would have helped absorb the water. Maybe a better system when pretreating a previously used enclosure is to treat it then let it sit for at least a month or the hatch time for any potential mites. Then fully scrub, rinse out and allow to dry. Maybe another options is to just give them a small enough amount of water to get a drink and not an amount to soak in.

The vet didn't seem all that surprised and had answers pretty quick. So it must happen on occasion. While she was recovering I was googling and came across a prior thread here where someone had a snake poisoned by it and just had to wait out he side affects.