Not as active as usual...

My year old cornsnake, Sunset, has not been as active as usual in her terrarium. On most nights in the past, she would pretty active, for example climbing alot, hanging out on the top of her towels instead of under them, and just generally more interested in what's going on. In the past couple of weeks, I have noticed she has not been above towel lately. Could she be depressed? I had a nice climbing stick in there for a while, but I took it out a couple of months ago. She would climb it, and wedge herself to the top of the terrarium cover. After a time, she couldn't hold herself up, and would fall. I took it out, out of fear that she would break something in the fall to the glass floor. Could she be bored because of this? Help? She is my first snake.

It could be that your snake is going into a shed cycle. They are less active during this time. It usually takes around 10 days or so for them to complete this process.
No. I don't think your snake is depressed. When he/she sheds out she will be her old self.
Now, she doesn't seem sick in any way does she?


wc

try not to worry . . .

. . . my amel corn sometimes does this. Usually it's because i wake her up when she's been having a good old nap, but once she is out of her cage and i am handling her she is fine and back to normal, i guess it's like us in the mornings we need a bit of time to wake up properly and get back to normal . If you do notice that your corns eyes are going the pre-shed blue, then corns apprieciate it more if you were to leave them alone!!! Thats when they could start to get grumpy !

I wouldn't worry as much. As said before, she might be going through her shed cycle and being less active. Another thing is that she might have actually calmed down a lot and right now she is really used to the new encironment. Before she might be a bit stressed and wanted to get out of the new environment so that was why she was climbing and crawling all around the cage.

I would say as long as she is eating, shedding and drinking alright then you don't really have to worry about her that much.

Just keep handling her so that she is used to you have happy when she sees you.


Good Luck and Happy Herping!

It was shed time!

Thanks for all of the advice. I guess she was just having PSS, pre-shedding stress syndrome! She's active and happy now!

If she liked the branch, I'd suggest you put it back in. She's not going to break anything from falling from the top of her tank to the bottom. Unless of course you have an extremely large tank. A fall of 12 - 24 inches isn't going to hurt them. I've seen snakes fall out of trees and crawl off unscathed. Both of mine flop from the ledge of their tanks all the time and climb right back up. It is especially funny when they climb up after they've eaten and the bulge can't fit on the ledge.

Just my 2 cents.

Peter

I bet there are times when you are in dream land, your snake is very active, and going to places in the tank that you dont even see. Snakes seem to like the dark quiet times, usually when everyone else is asleep! This isn't really very good for us snake lovers, because we want to watch our pets at their best, but this is usually in the middle of the night.

I think there is nothing really to worry about, you may get up very soon one morning to find a beautiful shedded skin in the tank.