DVT cause of death?

[ickle_moose]

So last night I saw the freakiest thing and I'm wondering if any of you lot could shed some light on it.

I was hanging out at my friend's pet store (it's on a night market, lots of fun people watching) and he'd just picked up a shipment from the airport, including one baby snow corn. There it was, zippy as anything in it's little deli cup, looking all cute.

Here's the freaky part: I picked up the deli for a closer look, and the snake went into convultions FOR NO APPARENT REASON! It twitched in this horrible way and was dead about 10 seconds later, little tongue hanging out. I felt like the grim reaper, one glance from me and you're on your way out!

So I hesitantly tell my friend that it's dead. He gives me a blank look, and says, 'no, it's alive'. Small argument ensues as he refuses to believe this thing went from perfectly healthy to dead in the minute it was out of his sight. Anyway, he wasn't too upset, fed it to a king snake and upped the king snake's price to make up for it.

Later as I described the convultions he said he's seen that before in new arrivals, but vary rarely. He thinks it was, as he put it, 'airplane high up air'. I'm pretty sure he meant Deep Vein Thrombosis. Anyone seen this before?

Still feeling pretty angel-of-death-y, poor little snake

 

[MegF.]

Snakes circulatory systems are very different from ours and I highly doubt that it had a DVT. Perhaps there was just something wrong with it from the start, or I suppose it could have had something kill it due to sudden pressure change although I also find that highly unlikely. I've had numerous snakes shipped by air (most are sent that way due to it being the law) and I've never had one affected by air travel. I think it was just a freak happening and hopefully it didn't have any diseases.