Dumbest Thing I Ever Did With My Cornsnake Thread

[axis1]

Hey everyone! How ya been?

I truly hope everyone is having a wonderful summer so far. I, myself, am having a doozy and I thought I'd take a few minutes after a long, hot day (one of those days when it's SO hot, that my Right Guard actually turned LEFT!), to jot down a few words to take the edge off, sorta. (Actually, I USUALLY check the new posts and to see if I have any PM's, but after doing what I just did to one of my corns, after an especially LONG day of jumping out of planes and the subsequent traffic jams which got me LOOPY on the way home, I just HAD to do THIS FIRST!).

Anyway, it might BE because of the heat, but then again, I'm a clutz during a cool, Fall or Spring day too, so don't know if attributing my stupidness to the heat is fair. Those of you who know me already know it sometimes takes me an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes so let's just leave it at the fact that I'm not the sharpest knife in the dishwasher. But I mean well and am usually kind to animals and small children, so please cut me some slack, huh?

To cut to the chase, after doing something so incredibly DUMB with my snakes tonight, something that's out of character for me, since I TRY to employ ALL of my funtioning neurons anytime I deal with my little sneaky ones, I thought I might start a thread that would serve as a place where we could ALL safely and honestly, disclose or share with each other any of a number of well-intentioned experiences with our beloved sneaky ones that went totally awry!

I would like to preface this with the intention or hope that anyone who will share his or her experiences, does so consistent with the fact that you love your corn snake and would never do anything intentionally to harm it (or any other animal, for that matter). I love my snakes and treat them as members of the family, just as I do my kittens.

So after a long and hot day and after a long and hot shower, which MAY or MAY NOT have contributed to my absentmindedness, who knows? But I went to the only room in the apartment dedicated to my little sneaky ones which is away from my kittens and my ophidiophobic sweetheart, checked on the 16 individual shoebox containers that house my recently hatched snows and 1 kinked-tailed striped amel I named "Kinky," as well as my 3 adult corns (Lilly, Bozo, & Chili-Pepper) and my one yearling who happens to be the only survivor of a small 2015 clutch from Lilly, named Ozzy. On the way, I took 3 small rats (60 grams each) out of my freezer and a small adult (15 gram) mouse for Ozzy, put them all in a ziplock freezer bag and into a small bucket of hot tap water. Since Lilly has been recovering from double-clutching, having laid her second clutch on July 2nd, I wanted to check on her ability to handle a small rat at this time. She had been doing well and already built her way up to adult mice, gradually, and after weekly hoppers since the day after laying that last clutch. However, after glancing in her enclosure, she was nowhere to be seen, meaning she was probably hiding under her favorite little hide. However, there ARE several hides in her enclosure in addition to the small incubator holding her last clutch (she is housed in a 65 gallon-sized, 30" x 30" x 18", screen mesh enclosure I initially had for her and the two other adult males when I cohabbed all of them and it IS kinda big for her but I thought she deserved the best enclosure when I separated them this past April, since she does the hardest work laying all those eggs).

So, to make sure she was hungry (Lilly usually has a STRONG feeding response and she's either charging at you with her mouth open when you dangle a mouse or rat down at her OR she won't move at all! There's no in-between with HER!) and not wanting to thaw and waste a whole rat - which go for $4.99 a piece or 3 for $12.99 and lately I've been so broke I can't PAY ATTENTION! Or at least it SEEMS that way! - I figured I would just lightly tap on her hide with Ozzy's small, not-yet-thawed-frozen-mouse, hopefully leaving a light scent of a rodent and if she's hungry, she'll come outta there and if not, she won't.

BIG MISTAKE!!! :eek1:

Well, I don't know if Lilly was actually UNDER that little, favorite hide of hers or if she was simply buried under the substrate outside which, in retrospect, the latter seems more likely, since as soon as I tapped one time on her hide with the solid, frozen rodent . . . SNAP! Lilly snapped her little but strong jaws right on the muzzle of that poor, dead, frozen rodent and subsequently and neatly, WRAPPED herself right around my hand and wrist!!!

I was like. .:headbang:. . . IDIOT!! HOW STUPID COULD I BE? Now what? Well, as you probably could guess, I spent the next few minutes gently but forcefully prying that frozen mouse's snout out of Lilly's vice-like jaws, carefully avoiding hurting my precious little sneaky one. I wished I could tell her WHY as she looked so confused, darting her flickering tongue in and out quicker than a three-dollar hooker! I was mortified for my little girl! And I was beating myself up for being such an idiot!!! :crying: (No TV tonight for me!!! Oh well, Game of Thrones is done for the year, so how bad could THAT be?).

So I quickly prepared the largest of the small rats - usually reserved for Bozo! - for Lilly and of course, she was the FIRST to be fed. But it was agony watching her pacing her little feeding tub as I waited for that rat to thaw!! It was like leaving the porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa waiting for that rat!!

However, as I type this, Lilly is about 60 grams heavier (and happier, thankfully!) and she doesn't even look like she's in a hurry to get out of her feeding tub! So a good ending to a potentially sticky situation! And it wasn't a total bummer of a day. I made my 500th jump from a plane today at the age of 55 (better late than NEVER, right?) and I can now move on to bigger and better things (BASE jumping anyone? Well not this year, but soon, hopefully!).

If anyone has any experiences which are seemingly stupid or slightly embarrassing, please share them here in the hope that this could be a safe place to share without being judged. Hopefully, anyway, as there ARE people reading this stuff and I can't account for what people will do because generally speaking, PEOPLE SUCK SOMETIMES, ya know? But HEY, it's OK to be human, ya know? There's just some days where you MIGHT think Taco Bell is a Mexican phone company or Tupac Shakur is a Jewish holiday, right? OK, I'll speak for myself! But you know what I mean!!!

In any event, this was ONE of my stupid experiences. I'll continue to share should I do anything else that's dumb with my snakes, but hopefully, these experiences will be few and far between!!

Later On!!! :crazy02:

 

[DollysMom]

Good cautionary tale. So glad it all ended well though!

I have nothing to top that with... yet.

 

[Zombiegirl]

Ha! Ok, I don't think this will top that, but...my lavender corn also has a voracious appetite, such that he can down his mouse in approx. 30 seconds or less...I timed him once...having said that, he can make a mess of things sometimes, case-in-point this incident...

I had thawed his mouse (maybe a teensy bit too much) as there ended up being blood and gross all over his tub when he was done...me in all of my infinite wisdom thought "oh hey I'll just dab that with a paper towel..."...so I did....and thus commenced me trying to pull said paper towel out of his mouth without damaging his little teefs...seriously...a paper towel...dude-bro....he snatched that thing out of my hand so fast I barely had time to notice he did it lol.

 

[axis1]

Good cautionary tale. So glad it all ended well though!

I have nothing to top that with... yet.

You are very fortunate! Hope it stays that way!! Thanx for chiming in!

Ha! Ok, I don't think this will top that, but...my lavender corn also has a voracious appetite, such that he can down his mouse in approx. 30 seconds or less...I timed him once...having said that, he can make a mess of things sometimes, case-in-point this incident...

I had thawed his mouse (maybe a teensy bit too much) as there ended up being blood and gross all over his tub when he was done...me in all of my infinite wisdom thought "oh hey I'll just dab that with a paper towel..."...so I did....and thus commenced me trying to pull said paper towel out of his mouth without damaging his little teefs...seriously...a paper towel...dude-bro....he snatched that thing out of my hand so fast I barely had time to notice he did it lol.

Thanx for sharing Zombiegirl! (Luv the moniker, btw!).

But isn't it better for your snake to have that type of feeding response, very much like my Lilly, than the way my Chili-Pepper chows down? He actually nudges the rodent several times as if trying to wake it up, then, after he notices it ain't gonna move, he slowly and clumsily tries to figure out which way to swallow it from. He's 8 years-old mind you!! (If he were a person, I'm afraid Chili would be the type of person who would trip over cordless phones!) I mean he STILL tries, unsuccessfully, to eat a rodent from the mid-section sometimes! But I love him to death anyway and he's one of the only snakes I ever owned who will climb right up into my arms as soon as I open the zipper to his cage! Lilly, on the other hand, is a little shy and skittish and will sometimes rattle her tail at me and doesn't like to be handled all that much. But mealtimes are usually no-nonsense and usually QUICK, barring breeding season, that is!

In any case, thanx for sharing!! I think I'm gonna go snort some Ajax!! :crazy02:

 

[Asher9]

So my sister isn't afraid of snakes, but she doesn't love them either. One day I was holding my snake, and she comes up and asks to touch him. I say yeah, and she pets him. She gets comfortable enough to with him to ask to hold him. I give her a brief run down on what to expect, and then hand him over. It's now five minutes in and she is loving him. My snake is just wrapped around her arm flicking his tongue. I get up to go to the bathroom, and as I walk out I hear a scream. I rush to my sister, and my snake has crawled half way up her sleeve. I tell her to stay calm, and that he won't hurt her. She doesn't seem convinced. I tell her to just wait and he will turn around and come back out. She gets up and starts jiggling her arm trying to get him out. I sit her down and grab her arm for her to stop shaking it. Eventually he came out, and my sister has never touched him again. It's funny, he didn't even look slightly annoyed or scared when he came out. Then again, I doubt he liked getting shaken. He was also ok physically.

 

[DollysMom]

Good story, Asher. I'm so glad your snake was okay.

 

[Micayla1895]

Interesting thread axis1, sometimes things go wrong despite our best intentions! I have to share my story too, it was quite terrifying at the time and I learnt a big lesson. So this was about 4 years ago when most of my corns were yearlings and they had crazy feeding responses (still do of course). So I always feed my snakes outside of their tanks in separate plastic tubs. One day I was in a bit of a rush and picked up my normal motley Draco and snow Paradox at the same time to return them to their tanks after they had finished eating. You could image what happened with that feeding response of theirs... I had to quickly pry Draco's jaws from around Paradox's neck! One of my most terrifying moments of snake keeping. That was perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever done, but needless to say I learnt my lesson well and have never done it again. Both snakes were fine in the end thankfully, with disinfectant being applied to Paradox's neck weekly just incase.

 

[axis1]

Interesting thread axis1, sometimes things go wrong despite our best intentions! I have to share my story too, it was quite terrifying at the time and I learnt a big lesson. So this was about 4 years ago when most of my corns were yearlings and they had crazy feeding responses (still do of course). So I always feed my snakes outside of their tanks in separate plastic tubs. One day I was in a bit of a rush and picked up my normal motley Draco and snow Paradox at the same time to return them to their tanks after they had finished eating. You could image what happened with that feeding response of theirs... I had to quickly pry Draco's jaws from around Paradox's neck! One of my most terrifying moments of snake keeping. That was perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever done, but needless to say I learnt my lesson well and have never done it again. Both snakes were fine in the end thankfully, with disinfectant being applied to Paradox's neck weekly just incase.

Wow! Good one! I know I started this thread and you would THINK I learned? (Nah! No frickin way!). :headbang: Last night after I fed two out of three of my new hatchlings who ate once before, I put them back into the same tub (just momentarily, mind you!) while I prepared their regular ones and while I placed the soiled ones aside to be cleaned (pinkies DO make a mess just like their older counterparts, after all). Next thing I know, I actually HEAR a ruckus going on in the tub and upon closer inspection, the little worm who DIDN'T eat was actually biting one of the ones who DID eat! :twohammer And I thought he wasn't hungry! I picked up the uneaten pinkie with a pair of tongs and placed it right under the little critter's kisser and whatta ya know? He ate the darn thing! Guess he just wanna to chow down on something that was MOVING? :eatsmiley

I don't know but after all this, I have to re-evaluate whether or not I should be keeping or caring for so many little hatchlings. NEVER AGAIN in the same tub, THAT'S for DANG sure!!!

 

[Giga]

I've had the usual mishaps; Lovecraft's gotten tangled in my hair, stuck down the back of sofas and even stuck in a table leg, but there have been one or two events that made me seriously question my own intelligence.

Firstly; when I first got him, Lovecraft was kept in a top-opening terrarium with secure catches on the sides. When he was getting too big for this, he was upgraded to an ordinary 4' viv. You know the type; wooden, with sliding glass doors. Well I bought this viv, set it up, added the electronics, the substrate and the decor, and thought I was good to go. I was quite proud of my set-up; it looked neat, and LC had a happy time exploring his new space. There was just one thing I'd overlooked; a lock for the viv doors. It wasn't so much that I'd forgot as that I didn't know it was necessary - none of the set-up guides I'd read had mentioned it, and though I noticed that many pics had locks on, I assumed that was for keeping people OUT, not the snake IN. Well, the second morning of moving LC to the viv, I find that he's not there. And the doors are about an inch ajar.

Panic ensues. I look high, I look low, and eventually find snakey under a sideboard. All this time I was cursing myself assuming I had not closed the doors fully, and put snakey back in with a promise to be more bloody careful. A few nights later, he's gone again. This time he was found on the shelf under his viv, behind a board game, and I wrung my hands together doubtfully; I was sure I'd shut it all the way, and yet it was an inch ajar again. This time, after LC was reacquainted with his home, I watched him potter about. Before my very eyes, he lined his body up with the glass of the viv and sort of pushed along it, opening the door himself. I made my other half watch him and went out for a lock immediately. He's never escaped since, and that was about 2.5 years ago.

Now the next story is unrelated to the first, and although in the end nothing terrible came of it, it had the potential to be far, far worse and was caused not by my ignorance, which I could at least claim for the first story, but my mindlessness. I'm quite ashamed of this, truth be told, but all's well that ends well, I guess.

So, as well as Lovecraft, I have two other non-corn snakes, one of which is a false water cobra named Yig. For those who aren't aware, snakes are among the articles in a falsie's natural diet. To set the scene, Lovecraft lives upstairs on the landing, directly outside the office where I spend most of my free time. Yig lives downstairs. One day I was doing what I often do and browsing the interwebs with Yig in my lap. Eventually Yig started to get bored and was beginning to wander, which is usually my hint that he wants to go back to his viv. So I pick him up, thinking about something else, and wander directly over to the landing viv. Not only did I put him in it, but I showed his head to a hide, as I often do.

I only realised that something was wrong when Yig didn't go smoothly into the hide, but balked outside of it, tongue-flicking with great excitement. I then suddenly realised that I was standing at the landing viv, but the snake in my hands wasn't dainty and red, but chunky and brown. And Lovecraft was inside the hide I was trying to put Yig in. Yig was still a juvie at the time and not much longer than LC, but he was approaching three times his weight so while I'm not sure he could have swallowed him, he'd have been able to give it a bloody good go. Thankfully, although he was clearly thinking about it, Yig seemed a bit unsure about this completely new 'prey' and had recently eaten, and didn't strike straight away. I managed to get him out the hide and rush him to his own viv with neither Lovecraft nor myself getting munched, but it gave me a horrible fright and I have been much more careful since.

Word of advice folks, if you have snakes that naturally eat other snakes, how about not putting them in with your smaller snakes, or you might be just as daft as me!

 

[axis1]

. . . Word of advice folks, if you have snakes that naturally eat other snakes, how about not putting them in with your smaller snakes, or you might be just as daft as me!

Whoa!! Good one Giga!! I just realized: in addition to being an entertaining thread (my initial reason for starting this exercise in admitted forgetfulness, an early onset of Alzheimer's, or just plain STUPIDNESS!), this may just be the type of thread where readers, no matter how experienced or NOT, can actually learn from the mistakes of others!! At WORST, it will be just boring, but hopefully entertaining, and at BEST, both entertaining AND a lesson which will helpfully prevent some real tragedies! Funny thing about PREVENTION of ANYTHING is, there's NO REAL WAY TO MEASURE SUCCESS!

Oh well, now that I've taken the luster out of it, I HOPE this thread does, at the very LEAST, provide some good comic relief!! :crazy01:

 

[daddio207]

Whoa!! Good one Giga!! I just realized: in addition to being an entertaining thread (my initial reason for starting this exercise in admitted forgetfulness, an early onset of Alzheimer's, or just plain STUPIDNESS!), this may just be the type of thread where readers, no matter how experienced or NOT, can actually learn from the mistakes of others!! At WORST, it will be just boring, but hopefully entertaining, and at BEST, both entertaining AND a lesson which will helpfully prevent some real tragedies! Funny thing about PREVENTION of ANYTHING is, there's NO REAL WAY TO MEASURE SUCCESS!

Oh well, now that I've taken the luster out of it, I HOPE this thread does, at the very LEAST, provide some good comic relief!! :crazy01:

This thread AND YOU are entertaining as usual !! LOL

After 40+ years and working with 100+/- species I've had A LOT of "I'm an idiot" moments haha. Most of the time I learn. Some of the time I repeat.
We know everybody else can laugh at us but you got to be able to laugh at yourself also. I do in a lot of posts but some don't get that without spelling every thought and intent out. Of course you don't have that issue LOL. Keeping it real and funny is your forte LOL

I can't think of a "I'm an idiot" moment with a corn snake but I got tons of them with other species LOL