The Little Things...

Now, I found that as a new snake owner I couldn't help but become obsessed with the welfare of my snakeling. Not that it's a bad thing to be obsessed with the welfare of my baby, but I did what most new snake owners do - I checked the heat and humidity of my cage constantly. I found that a glass screen-topped cage was very very difficult to keep heat and humidity in (especially humidity) and so I misted down my baby's cage several times a day.

Unfortunately, misting alone was not enough. The lid let too much moisture escape. I followed someone's suggestion to place a damp towel on top of the cage and cover half the top with tin-foil to hold the moisture in, and it helped a little, but not much.

Regardless of my obsessive misting of Shiva's cage, her first shed with me was an absolute mess. She managed to get the head piece off but patches of her body still had shed stuck all over. I filled a bowl with warm water and placed her in it to soak and loosen the stuck on skin. I sat with her for an hour, watching TV while she soaked and I gently rubbed the shed off into the water. It took a while, but I eventually managed to get every piece off.

Naturally, after that horrible shed, I went to the forums and asked about what to do to make her next shed easier. "Make her a Humid Hide", they told me. So I ran off to the store, bought some Tupperware and some moss, brought it home, cut a hole in the Tupperware for Shiva to slither in and out of, placed the moss in the bottom, and filled the hide with water. Shiva loved it and after I first showed her the humid hide she spent several hours a day curled up inside of it.

The day before Thanksgiving day, 2006, I was playing with Shiva when I noticed one of her neck scales looked a little strange - shrunken and discolored. Upon further inspection I found that she had about 10 scales total that had a similar shrunken and dry appearance. My first reaction was to panic. My second, call the vet and make an appointment. The vet had no openings that day, and they were closed from Thanksgiving day through the weekend so the soonest I could get Shiva into the vet was Monday. I hoped it would be soon enough and consulted the internet. I found no helpful information on the internet, and nobody on the forum I posted on seemed to have any suggestions, so I turned to The Boa Constrictor Manual.

From reading the listings and descriptions of diseases, the only thing that seemed similar to what I was seeing was Bacterial Dermititis. According to the manual, I should treat the disease with Neosporin. I obsessively slathered Shiva with Neosporin several times a day, and by the time we were able to go to the vet she was already starting to go into shed again and the vet told me she should shed out the skin problem fine since I had caught it while it was in the first stages. Sure enough, Shiva not only had a great shed, but she shed out the dried up scales with no problems at all!

(Photos: Top Right- Shiva in her humid hide, bottom three- the dried patches of scales)