Escape and near-tragedy

[Bogertophis]

...
This experience has been horrible. I've of course lost animals to illness or age before, but this is the first time I have been the direct cause of great suffering in an animal I love. I can't forgive myself for it but I can sure as hell do a better job of preventing it - I'll certainly never again trust a sliding door entrance on an enclosure for any snake under 200 grams, even if it seems like there is no way on earth they could fit through the gap. I thought the added weather stripping plus my observation that she couldn't get her nose through the gap were enough. They weren't.

Please send positive thoughts for little Miso, and please don't put anything other than heavy-bodied snakes in sliding front enclosures; put locks on them to prevent doors being pushed open, and double and triple-check and secure every single gap or hole - even if you think escape is impossible - before deciding any enclosure is safe.

This is a perfect illustration of why housing for snakes is not a "one-size fits all" answer. While this is a site for BPs, there are many other species discussed & kept by readers here, yet it's all to easy to get the impression that stackable sliding-front enclosures are "THE" perfect home for any & all kinds of snakes. That bit of wiggle room between the front sliders is an "attractive nuisance" to a snake in the very same way a backyard swimming pool inadvertently invites trouble from neighborhood children.

In the past I have put snakes on my floor for closely supervised exploration and noticed how they'd gravitate to a sliding glass door, obviously aware of the "outside" air that they found enticing. That was much like what happened with your enclosure, only on a larger scale & with a sickening & guilt-inducing outcome.

I also can remember when I was fairly new to keeping snakes & housed a hatchling king snake in a terrarium with a sliding screen lid: that tiny but energetic soul did the unthinkable- she squeezed herself into the tiny (maybe .25") gap left in the track of the screen lid even when the locking peg was inserted...I never imagined how determined a snake might be, & in that case, it wasn't a matter of any difference in air flow that attracted her. No, she just found a gap to explore & "went for it"; happily she was uninjured from her escape, & happily I found her in the toe of a boot in my closet later that same day, but that's when I knew I'd be making my own cage tops for my glass tanks (as I'd done in the past for other small pets) from then on.

It's easy to underestimate things a snake might do: some years back, I was about to clean the large tank that housed one of my adult FL rat snakes. I unlocked the heavy wire mesh & wood top, but left it in place while I left the room briefly to do or get something (I forget exactly what now). When I returned, that snake had pushed her way out from under the top to escape, but inexplicably stopped with the cage top resting on her tail tip! She had to have her tail tip surgically removed, but otherwise she was fine. So even with many years of keeping snakes, the point is that we can STILL be surprised by some of the things our snakes will do.

In the past, I've only ever used 2 enclosures with overlapping glass sliders...they were wood furniture cabinets that I modified as snake homes, & I never had any trouble since the snakes were larger...one was an adult gopher snake, the other an adult king snake. The other thing is that plate glass doesn't have as much "give" to it as the plexi that's typically used on enclosures (because it's lighter weight), but that matters little to a determined snake.

Anyway, don't beat yourself up...we all make some mistakes...& I hope she makes a full recovery.