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RIP Steele

Linda

New member

I was down in San Francisco since Thursday on a surprise vacation for my birthday.
I was visiting my grandsons and daughter in law. My grandson, Connor, who is almost 7 adores snakes
and I gave him a corn baby when he moved away last year. It was an anery that he named Steele. Steele would have been a year old in July.

We stayed at a hotel for four days and on my last day there went to their other grandmother's house
where they live, for dinner and a birthday party for me.

I hadn't seen Steele yet and asked Connor to take me up to the den where they kept him. He said he
would be right up. I went up ahead of time and after what I found, I told Connor to stay out of the room.

It makes me cry to think about it now. Poor Steele was curled up partially inside his completely dry water bowl and hanging half out of it. I picked him up but he wasn't completely stiff. I had been told he was fed on Tuesday night. Halfway down his body his skin was still soft and somewhat mushy. I was hoping that he maybe just was
in shock or something so I took him into the bathroom and put him into lukewarm water but he was gone.
His mouth was open and I could see that he had suffered.

But what I don't know is how he really died. Did he have a problem after eating and went to his water to try to help himself or did his water dry up and he died of dehydration? I wonder about a digestive problem because
of the state of his stomach area that wasn't still like the rest of him. He was fed a fuzzy as usual.

Could it have been bad? Could his intestine have twisted? Would he try to drink water to help digest?
or am I just grasping at straws?

Or did his Uncle cause his death by forgetting to give him water for the 4/5 hot days that we were at the hotel?
 
I'm sorry to hear of you and your grandson's loss. What a tragedy. =(

I would almost say it sounds like dehydration. If everything was going well up till then, a 4-5 day without water in a hot room could have led to his demise.

Were his eyes shrunken in anyway, or skin wrinkled like he'd been vacuum-packed? Those are usually the two classic signs of dehydration.

Other than that things that usually help others to help determine issues are: What type of substrate was he on? And temps that the room was kept at or could have peaked to?

Btw, rigor mortis subsides within a few hours of death. So he could have been partially stiff and still looked 'alive' when you first picked him up.

Again, I'm so sorry. :(
 
Oh what a sad story ! im so sorry about your grandsons snake its like loosing a member of the family when you loose a much loved pet.Havn`t had to deal with the death of a snake yet but your story sounds like having no water is the prime suspect of death.
 
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