Burmese Swallows Electric Blanket!

[TraconSnake]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13939272/?GT1=8307

Surgery removes electric blanket from python

12-foot snake inadvertently swallows blanket, including cord, control box


AP: Updated: 3:56 p.m. MT July 19, 2006

KETCHUM, Idaho - It took surgery to save a 12-foot Burmese python after it swallowed an entire queen-size electric blanket — with the electrical cord and control box.

The blanket must have gotten tangled up in the snake's rabbit dinner, owner Karl Beznoska said. He said he kept the blanket in the 60-pound reptile's cage for warmth.

"The prognosis is great," veterinarian Karsten Fostvedt at St. Francis Pet Clinic in Ketchum said after Tuesday's two-hour operation on the python, named Houdini.

Fostvedt said specialists at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine told him it probably would have taken Houdini six hours to swallow the blanket and the snake probably would have died without the operation.

X-rays showed the tangle of the blanket's wiring extending through about 8 feet of the python's digestive tract. The surgery to remove it took an 18-inch incision.

Neither Fostvedt nor fellow veterinarian Barry Rathfon had operated on a snake before. "We just basically called a couple of specialists and they told us where to go in," Fostvedt said.

He said it would take several days for Houdini's anesthesia to wear off because snakes have such slow metabolism.

Houdini has been with Beznoska for 16 years, and is a popular show-and-tell guest in local schools.

[JLC]

This is the fourth thread started on this story. We may be working up to some sort of record here!

[TraconSnake]

Where are the other ones? I didn't look in the burmese section - I thought anything like this would be in General, and the story is only a day old.

Edit: Just found the two others.

Another reason NOT to use heat pads
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=33080

News Story
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=33070

[iceman25]

Goes to show that how long you have had your snake means squat as far as you knowing the right thing to do by them. I have met many people who have kept reptiles for over twenty years and such and quite frankly they know crap about proper husbandry. I mean, all you have to do is take a look at their setup. Burms and Balls and Boas all living together! And when you try to tell them that this is not very good practice or husbandry they go off on a self righteous rant about how they have been keeping reptiles for so many years and everyone else who thinks different can take a flying leap at the moon! How pathetic! A newbie who talks to different people and gets good solid advice from the real Pros know better than these gas bags!

Ok I'm off the box now.

[alexrls]

this is too funny lets keep count...