Snake in the Chair

It's not every day a snake gets lost in your living room chair. But then with unusual pets come unusual problems.

Friday night. It had been a long "short" week following Labor Day. All the urgent care cases we manage to squeeze into our already stacked appointment and surgery caseload always seem more numerous after a long holiday weekend, and this week was no different. The long weekend gives dogs an extra day to get sick from stealing fatty BBQ leftovers and to tear toenails while ripping around the countryside with their recreating owners!

After a late meal with my family, I was finally starting to decompress from this last hectic day. The kids were off playing video games together, the dishes were done, and I was seriously considering falling into bed with my latest book, Dakota Dawn. Then it occurred to me that I could watch the kids play their games and handle my 4-year-old corn snake. My creamsicle-colored corn snake Peaches is a very nice snake, about three feet long, mellow and easy to handle unlike my son's much younger albino corn snake (Phantom) who acts like a cobra any time you try to handle it! Peaches never strikes and, if she did, her tiny teeth wouldn't do much damage because corn snakes are constrictor-type snakes who squeeze their prey before eating.

As companionable as Peaches is, she doesn't demand attention--nudging a hand like my dog Guppy or loudly purring in my face like my kitty Cheeks. Safely contained in her giant terrarium, Peaches mostly curls up under her large hollow basking rock. On rare occasions, we marvel as she stretches herself along her tree limb or has staring contests with Cheeks who finds Snake TV pretty entertaining. (This spring we added a new "channel" for Cheeks' viewing pleasure -- Rat TV -- which is a lot more high action.) Pretty much the only time I handle Peaches is prior to feeding. We don't let her eat inside her terrarium to avoid accidental ingestion of her bedding as well as to keep her habitat cleaner. Because I worry that Peaches will begin to associate handling with eating and become more aggressive, a few quiet moments of contact for the sake of contact is a good idea.

Dr. Kim lures Peaches forward with a nummy mouse meal.

After extricating Peaches from under her rock, I settled into my blue recliner to relax. This, I thought to myself, is exactly what I needed: a full belly, laughing kids and some much-needed bonding with my unassuming reptile. Peaches slithered slowly around my forearms. She slithered so slowly, in fact, she seemed not to be moving at all. In reality, though, when I tried to arise a while later to put the kids to bed, I discovered Peaches had wiggled her way into the back cushion of the chair and I was holding just the hind third of her body! If you've never held a snake, you might not realize that holding the hind third is not holding much at all. You've got no leverage and the snake has the momentum. Accelerating from lassitude to full panic in record time, I called my son over to try to wrest Peaches' front end from the cushion while I applied traction to her back end, but it was too late. Peaches' muscular little body slid from my grasp in the "wild blue yonder" of the chair.

For some people, just imagining a snake hiding in the living room furniture is a wake-up-sweating nightmare. My biggest fear, however, was having Peaches sneak out of the chair and disappear into our old farmhouse where she might meet her demise by dehydration or predation from her biggest "fan" Cheeks. My snake book suggests tricks for catching a rogue snake. All involve laying traps around the baseboards because snakes tend to travel along the walls. Not only is my house such a colossal mess that reaching the baseboards is nearly impossible for me, but my old farmhouse also has snake-sized hidey holes in the floors and baseboards that a corn snake might happily disappear down before reaching a carefully laid snake trap. The fear of outright losing Peaches dissolved into dismay that I'd have to disassemble the blue chair to retrieve the snake as well as concern that if someone accidently lowered the footrest, she'd be a mashed mess inside the chair. With one hand grasping the part of Peaches I could still see, my son and I carefully set the chair on its side so we could assess the inner workings. Although we couldn't see Peaches any better this way, it made it easier to coax her slightly forward by "tickling" her back end.



Dr. Kim coaxes
Peaches out of the chair

With her head just visible where the back of the chair meets the armrest, Peaches put on the brakes. This is when I remembered a trick that had, in the past, coaxed her as well as Phantom out from a fake hollow log in their terraria. Food. Since it was close to feeding time, I quickly warmed up a frozen fuzzy mouse in a cup of very hot water until it was "mouse body temperature" (the non-specific but very descriptive thermal requirement set forth in my snake books). Grasping the fuzzy's tiny hind feet with a long hemostat, I waved the meal in front of Peaches' flickering tongue. Luckily she took the bait and emerged about half-way. Teasing her with the mouse only went so far, however. She refused to exit the safety of the seat and grew weary of my "dangling mouse" trick, so I eventually relented and allowed her to eat dinner. By now, though, I was able to grasp the front third of her body and this is a much better position to be in. Although I likewise wearied of this drama and wished I'd gone to bed when the thought first crossed my mind over an hour ago, I was now fully committed to getting Peaches out of the chair. A snake who has eaten is a snake who will soon poop, and I did not want snake poop in my easy chair!

We carefully set the chair back upright and poked our fingers along the non-removable (grrr!) seat cushion to urge Peaches forward. After many dicey minutes waiting for Peaches to commit to slithering toward our second blue chair, she emerged sufficiently from the seat-back to be safely tugged free. As I dropped Peaches back into her terrarium and latched the lid tight, I breathed a deep sigh of relief that all ended well.  It just goes to figure that a crazy catch-up work week would end in a bizarre fashion, I thought to myself. As I hurried off to bed before any more weirdness could happen in the dregs of the day, it occurred to me that it had been a true "snake-in-a-chair" kind of day.

Getting Crabby





Quick. When I say "family pet" what do you think of?

 

A friendly, floppy-tongued dog? A sleek, sly-eyed cat? Maybe if you live rurally, the image of a handsome horse or frisky goat pops into your head. A Google image search for "family pet" returns a plethora of photos of people with their dogs; however, photos of kids with a duck, chicken and a giant boa constrictor also dot the first webpage.

 

My family currently shares our home with two dogs and two cats, wonderful but common mammals. Last spring we got a little adventurous and invited a lovely juvenile corn snake into our midst. Having successfully adjusted to reptile care, we recently branched out to hermit crabs. Our first hermit crab was a Christmas present for our preschooler. At the time, I thought that was a strange, potentially painful gift for a 3-year-old.

 

I was wrong.

 

Hermit crabs are not slimy, stinky or especially dangerous. They have distinct personalities and are surprisingly social. When we visited the pet store to pick out our first crab (named Gooby by our son), we handled numerous crabs in order to find the perfect pet. Most were shy and pulled into their shells with their large claw effectively "blocking the door". Gooby, however, poked out his legs and began climbing around my hand. He (we later learned) was cautious as we took turns looking at and petting him, but his retreats into his shell were momentary. The one and only pinch the kids or I have yet received was at the pet store on my thumb. It was more surprising than painful!

 

Hermit Crab races

Gooby has since been joined by a similarly-sized hermit crab named Crab (also named by the preschooler). When selecting Crab, we were more concerned with size than temperament, trying to reduce the chance of one of the crabs killing the other for its shell. Crab was initially somewhat timid, but has begun to "come out of its shell" with gentle handling. Crab's sex is undetermined at this time. While Gooby is a bit of an exhibitionist, stretching far out of his shell to reveal his lack of gonopores (the sign of maleness), Crab is still a bit more reserved.

 

Our curiosity will remain unsatisfied for as long Crab decides to stay close to home. There is no pulling a hermit crab from its shell against its will. Apparently it would rather die first. We are still waiting for the first shell upgrade which might allow us to glimpse Crab or Gooby’s full hermit crab body in all its glory. In anticipation of The Move, we have provided several empty shells with openings just slightly larger than our crabs’ largest claw.

 

In their natural environment, hermit crabs are primarily land dwellers. In fact, their primary requirement for salt water is to breed. Breeding in captivity is unlikely, so it doesn’t actually matter if Crab is a boy or girl!

 

In addition to being relatively easy to care for—our inexpensive all-inclusive pet store crabitat will keep our duo going for a while—hermit crabs are not known to transmit zoonotic diseases to people. This is in contrast to aquatic pet turtles and many reptiles which can transmit Salmonella bacteria to their handlers. Even so, we all practice thorough hand-washing after playing with our hermit crabs just to be on the safe side.

 

The hermit crab is a crustacean in the phylum Arthropoda to which insects and arachnids such as spiders also belong. This relationship information is important to me because while I admire spiders from afar I do not think I would like to cuddle a Tarantula. Yet I have found I absolutely adore playing with our spider-like hermit crabs. The firm, cool grip of their exoskeletal limbs, their cute beady on-stalk eyes and wiggly antennae, and their funny, friendly antics have made me a crab convert!

 

Even a Corn Snake Needs a Vet

This week's veterinary adventure involved Snakey, a young corn snake who wouldn't eat. Only 12" long, little Snakey's last meal was over 6 weeks ago. A baby corn snake this size should eat once a week or so. Interestingly, baby corn snakes can be notoriously stubborn about eating and some must be trained how to eat. Yes, I said the snake must be trained. Here's how my assistant Tim and I got Snakey eating again. WARNING: Some of the photos and descriptions that follow are a bit graphic.

Snakey was visibly thin from prolonged anorexia.
If you're wondering how a snake can look thin,
you'd have to see it to believe it,
but Snakey's epaxial (back) muscles
were noticeably atrophied or shrunken. 

Corn snakes are carnivores eating rodents, small amphibians
 or other reptiles in the wild. Most pet corn snakes are bred
 in captivity, and are typically fed fresh or frozen rodents.
My assistant Tim thaws a frozen pinkie in preparation for
feeding Snakey. A pinkie is a tiny, newborn mouse bred for
this purpose.  While the pinkie appeared much too large for
Snakey's tiny mouth, the owner reported Snakey had eaten
 a whole pinkie over 6 weeks earlier.

Our first attempt at enticing Snakey with the plain thawed
pinkie was met with disinterest. In fact, Snakey seemed
a little frightened of the offering, so I proceeded
to "brain" the dead mouse. I cut into the skull to
expose the tasty brain juices. If this didn't interest
Snakey, we planned to cut up the pinkie into small pieces.
Our last ditch effort at meeting Snakey's nutritional needs
would be "gavage" or force feeding through a stomach tube.

Tim holds the pinkie mouse with a forceps and "teases"
the baby corn to stimulate its reptilian appetite. We watched in
anticipation and amazement as Snakey tasted the brain juice.
Snakey's nose never left the pinkie after that first taste,
and the little snake began to methodically feed.

Snakey's seemingly too small jaw unhinges to allow for ingestion
of the pinkie mouse. We waited with baited breath unsure if the corn
snake might change its mind at any point. We are feeding the snake
outside its enclosure to avoid accidental ingestion of bedding material.

Tim and I quietly cheer as Snakey committed
to eating the pinkie mouse. 

Notice the bulge just behind Snakey's head. Digestion of the pinkie meal
will take 2-3 days. Snakey's owner will need to learn how to "brain"
pinkies until the baby snake willingly and consistently eats these offered meals on its own. 

While baby corn snakes frequently need lessons on how to eat, the problem can be made worse from stress. Husbandry issues and over-handling are common causes of stress. Before acquiring a corn snake or other non-traditional pet (including mammals like Guinea pigs, chinchillas, etc.) thorough research into the housing, veterinary, legal and nutritional needs of your desired pet is essential. A tiny corn snake like Snakey may grow to be 5 feet long and may live more than 20 years! That is a huge commitment to make in the proper care of another living being, but as those with "exotic" pets will attest it can be a rewarding, enjoyable experience.