I bought my first ball python (and first snake I have ever even touched!) on 09/25/19 from Mike Wilbanks, and she had eaten the day prior. She is a Pastel Sugar. I named her Willow and I adore her. She hasn't once hissed or tried to strike at me and seems extremely docile and curious the couple times I have handled her. I have been successfully feeding her two fuzzies at a time on Monday evenings, in fact, she is so aggressive and eager that when she strikes at the mice I jump and have even dropped the tongs before with how much it startles me.

I have two fuzzies left I am planning on feeding her tonight, and have already bought small mice to start her on next week. She was born on 07/10/2019, and as of 10/14/19 weighs 98g. I keep her in a plastic tub with an UTH with a thermostat that I set to 94. The first two weeks of having her I had the humidity at about 50-55%. During week two I left for a few days to visit my dad, and left my bp in my boyfriends care. He gave me daily updates about her humidity and temperature, which was 50% at the time.

When I returned on the 7th, I went to feed her and noticed that she was looking very wrinkly. I assumed that she was getting ready to shed due to there being skin peeled back under her jaw, but went ahead and fed her because she was in her "strike pose". She ate eagerly. The same night I also created a humidity box out of a food container and damp paper towels. I have only seen her go inside it once. A few days passed and I was concerned that she was looking even more wrinkly, and still not yet shedding. I began to do research and found the care sheets provided on this site, and decided to give her a 20 minute soak in shallow warm water to see if it helped, and afterwards ran her through a damp washcloth. A small piece of shed came off of her head, but nothing more seemed to budge. I taped up some holes in her tub and moved the water bowl to the warm side, and successfully bumped the humidity up to 65%. This was around 3 or 4 days ago. She is displaying all of the "shedding" behaviors, by rubbing her head on her water bowl and hides. She appears to have an eye cap off on one side, but the other one is looking dry. To me her skin looks loose and ready to come off.

Should I leave her alone and wait, or give her another soak? I did pick her up today to weigh her and take some photos to upload here, I hope that didn't mess it up even more. I don't want to stress her out, but I'm becoming worried that she has a fully retained shed or is dehydrated. I checked her for mites, and checked and washed her whole enclosure just in case and never found any. Should I wait and see if she sheds, soak her, or do I need to rush her to a veterinarian ASAP? I want to be the best snake mom I can be, and I'm worried I'm not doing a good job.


This was 09/25/19 the day I got her:


This was on 10/09/19 when I started to worry:


These two are as of 10/14/19: