Had a problem with one of my hides.

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TigerCoastal

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I was feeding my coastals the other night and my large male gets an xl rat and a large rat. For hides in his enclosure i have some plastic pots that i have used my hole saws and put a few different sized holes in. He has had these hides for the last year and a half, and i made sure that i put holes that would be big enough for him as an adult as well as ones that were a little smaller.

When i went to feed the second rat, he had already retreated to his hide so i attempted to lure him out of the largest hole in the hide to feed him. The dopey bugger came out the smallest hole in the hide like a rocket, got to the bulge in his belly, and dragged the hide across the enclosure to the open door where it hit the litter dam and wedged him in the hole. He had the second rat in his mouth and there was no way i could get near him to try to remove him from the hide, i tried once when he had the rat almost half way in and he spat it out to try for a bigger meal. So i let him finish the rat, moved the hide to the middle of the enclosure and left him.

He was still stuck the next morning, but body temps were around normal and he didnt look distressed so i left him to digest. By the next morning (today) he had digested enough to get out without any help and was sitting up on his perch. I have now removed these hides from my enclosures and modified them so that they have an open bottom to the entry's to stop this happening again.
 
haha that would have looked quite comical.
Glad its none the worse for the experience.
 
Haha aww poor guy. I had a similar problem with my Bredli. The hole in his hide was small enough for him to fit but with a food bulge he kinda got stuck half in/half out
 
Haha aww poor guy. I had a similar problem with my Bredli. The hole in his hide was small enough for him to fit but with a food bulge he kinda got stuck half in/half out

He wedged himself that hard that he did try to get out going backwards himself, but his scales were grabbing on the edge of the hole and he was stuck good....no going forward, no going back.

bahaha, you had to have gotten pics, would have looked funny. Silly snake.

Nah no pics, camera battery was on the charge :(
 
Am I reading that right ? You left him stuck in his hide like that for 2 days ?
 
Am I reading that right ? You left him stuck in his hide like that for 2 days ?

Yep and turned out it was the best thing to do... what would happen in the wild if something similar happened to the snake? If the temps are right they will digest and move on when the bulge is small enough. Why stress the snake, cause possible regurge which would have cause damage to the snake if i couldnt get it out, cause possible scale damage pulling it backwards or trying to cut/break the hide. I weighed up all my options and i felt it was the safest option.
 
The snake is not in the wild , it's in your care ...but fair enough , all turned out well.
 
The snake is not in the wild , it's in your care ...but fair enough , all turned out well.

I understand that the snake is not wild, but at the same time they are not a domestic animal, so it is possible to use a wild behavior when dealing with a problem like this. A "trapped" animal will be more easily stressed, and in a more defensive state than what they normally are, so if they were to be manhandled, poked, prodded and pushed to get out of somewhere that they will be capable of escaping themselves given time is an unneeded stress IMO. It wasnt trapped to the point that the hide was cutting into the snake, it was just grabbing the back of the scales all the way around and lifting them. If it hadnt got out by today i have some mates coming around tonight so i would have done something about it then.
 
I understand that the snake is not wild, but at the same time they are not a domestic animal, so it is possible to use a wild behavior when dealing with a problem like this. A "trapped" animal will be more easily stressed, and in a more defensive state than what they normally are, so if they were to be manhandled, poked, prodded and pushed to get out of somewhere that they will be capable of escaping themselves given time is an unneeded stress IMO. It wasnt trapped to the point that the hide was cutting into the snake, it was just grabbing the back of the scales all the way around and lifting them. If it hadnt got out by today i have some mates coming around tonight so i would have done something about it then.

All good , you did what you thought was right and it turned out fine ..

My thinking was that 5 minutes of poking and prodding etc to get it out would have been far less stressful than 48 hours stuck in a hide.
 
Damn. Makes me glad all my hides don't have a normal hole. They have a 'door' and open bottom (eg. pot turned upside down), so they're less likely to get stuck and can just lift the whole hide if need be..
 
I probably would have gone that way if i had a second set of hands to help, 7'+ of angry coastal to wrestle head/tail and get out at the same time was a bit beyond my skill level, and the next day i didnt like the thought of wearing a half digested rat or two. I totally agree with where you are coming from, and if the situation was different i would have gone about it differently. I was more making trying to make this a bit of a warning to other noob''s to think about things like this when making their own hides.

Syner thats all mine are, but they had the holes a little up the sides not right at the bottom, but thats been changed now. ;)
 
I had one of my adult coastals grab a rat then fall in the water bowl not long ago, couldn't believe she actaully tried to eat it under water the dopey girl. I had to grab her out & dump her on dry land because she actually looked like she would drown herself trying to eat it rather than let her rat go:lol:
 
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