I am surprised that you actually got a call back from Petco but at least you got that much. Depending upon what the terms of agreement are on your bill of sale, unless mites are specifically excluded as a returnable/refundable qualification, you may have been given a refund if you had returned the snake. Having only worked at Petsmart, I don’t know Petco’s protocol for animals returned due to health issues. However, from my experience, one of four things could have occurred after you returned the snake:
Snake returned to supplier
Snake treated by vet
Snake treated at store (not likely)
Snake sent to vet for euthanasia
Snake returned to sales floor
Also one more thing I want to add. I only worked in pet care at Petsmart for about 6 months and during that time I never saw any evidence of snake mites on snakes received in from the supplier, nor did anyone ever return a snake due to snake mites. There were Guinea pigs delivered from the supplier with ring worm but to my knowledge/surprise that was it. Which leads me to believe that the two stores get their animals, at least the reptiles, from different suppliers.
At the end of the day you are on the down hill slope with your journey to total mite control/eradication, yay, but in the painful process you most likely saved a sweet innocent little snake baby’s life…….
I glanced back through the posts but wasn’t able to find his name, did you mention it? I see we have Gary and Hotdog (LOVE the name!) but what is your Petco baby’s name? His eyes make him all the more adorable, he’s absolutely precious!
Me and my daughter are at odds as to what to call him.
She’s seven so naturally his name must be ‘Snowy’ so that’s what she calls him.
I’m incredibly obsessed with ffxiv so I named him after a character (Elidibus) with the nickname ‘Ely’.
(she also named Gary, all our mexican hognoses at that point were named after ocean things like ‘fish’, ‘bubble’, and naturally Gary was next bc spongebob)
I dealt with mites twice. The first time I assume it was from handling large constrictors at a friends house. The second time was surely my fault when I bought a large number of animals over a 3-4 month period.
On the subject of mite lifecycles, I suggest a full court press for 60 days. @t_h_wyman has a good breakdown on a simple scorched earth program somewhere in a post, hopefully he has a link to it, I wasn’t able to find it.
Here’s what’s worked for me.
Remove all equipment from the room. Submerge everything in slightly soapy water for 60 seconds.
Bathe the animals. Apply a thick lather with Dawn dish soap and let set for 60 seconds. Rinse clean. Treat with frontline or other mite treatment.
Clean the room. With racks, clean them thoroughly with soapy water especially the “ceiling” of the tubs. Clean everything and every surface unless you want to fight this forever.
Vacuum the floor thoroughly. Mites don’t go up as much as down from what I’ve seen. If the room is carpeted, vacuum several times and treat with mite treatment. Vacuum often until your sure you’re out of the woods. Air the room out before replacing the animals if you treated the surfaces.
Treat enclosures with mite treatement and allow to air out for several hours.
Now you can put everything back, but on paper towels, no bedding until you’re 100% sure it solved.
That should substantially drop the parasite load in the room and hopefully keep them off the animals for 30 days. Repeat the process after 30 days.
As far as expos go, as bad as it sounds, I pick a few sacrificial lambs and those are the only animals that come out. Hand sanitizer for everyone, or no touchy. You’re not going to get mites making it from one table to the other on their own. You’re going to get them through other people handling them, or you picking them up on your person.
If an animals gets handled, it gets a 30 day quarantine. Strip in a room that has no snakes after the show. Shower and blow/wipe out your nose thoroughly as well. The eggs are tiny, who knows where they could get.
So weirdest occurrence just happened with Gary (the stiff hognose from mite treatment).
I’ve been giving him soaks every day and today his lower jaw shed came undone so I assisted him in getting it all off (it’s quite the experience to hold the shed while the snake pulls off of it. so neat). Anyway, afterwards he seemed more active. My best guess is the mite treatment stiffened up his ready to shed skin since it saps all humidity from something and that’d make it fairly hard to move in something. If its any other detail, the shed after I put him away is already stiff when generally they stay soft for some time (in my experience with BPs and hoggies).
I was wondering if anyone else has had seen this problem with a hognose + miracle mite treatment. I know it says not to use 5 days AFTER a shed, but nothing about during in blue…well, I suppose you should avoid it when an animal is in blue.
That’s great info, especially for the expos! Not a lot of people think about expos, even as a customer when I would get home I would take off all clothes, bag em up till wash day and hop in a shower. I have to say your last sentence gave me a bad mental picture and could be the beginning of a very cheezy horror movie!
That procedure is probably the best take no chances, scorched earth approach! You should probably just mass spam email everyone on morph market! With a disclaimer:
Tell them to keep it, and pray they never have to use it!
Initially I voted for the name PAM. Hilarious and a great conversation starter. But then again maybe not a good idea because you don’t want to be reminded of this incident every time you say his name. Snowy…kids are so predictable. In my head I hear an angry Samuel L. Jackson from (name almost any movie he’s starred in) calling him “White Boy”. Hope that didn’t offend anyone, I have a twisted sense of humor. Now I’m picturing your daughter at a school show-and-tell telling the class her snake’s name is “White Boy” in an angry SLJ voice. Now I’m picturing you explaining it in the principal’s office and he’s NOT seeing the humor in it. Annoying principal, some people just don’t have a good sense of humor. Yeah, you should probably stick with Snowy or Ely.
So I’ve been watching Gary pretty closely today and he’s so lethargic and limp that I’m about 75% chance he won’t bounce back. The combo of being practically covered in mites + the chemicals I think might have been too rough on his small body (he is an October baby). Every time I check on him its always alarming how unresponsive he is to the point that I think he’s dead until he flicks his tongue. The rest of the hognoses are doing fine but he is clearly not.
He got one (dawn dish soap) just to make sure the mites were all gone ~ 2 days ago and the last few ones have been only water to soak in or wet paper towels to help with his shed
I just checked on him after leaving him a reptilink and was surprised at how ‘limp’ feeling he was when handled. However he’s still tongue flicking and huffing so I think he might be alright and I’m just worrying over nothing. I’m going to leave him alone for the rest of the day since clearly I’m annoying him and probably stressing him out
I think you’ve done everything right, hopefully he’s just reacting poorly to so much change in so little time. Any way you could give him a little bit of paper bedding to make him feel more comfortable?
i’ll rip up some more paper towels for him to hide in c: I did that for my blue tongues as well and despite pooping the worst poop they’ve ever pooped before, they have liked it
Sounds like a solid plan. Gotta love the poop, and of course then it just gets everywhere. Hopefully a little more paper towel makes him calm, recuperate, and he perks up again quickly!
Honestly mites are the worst part of this hobby on a personal level, at least from what I’ve encountered thus far. Gary has been properly covered with ripped up paper towels (huffing at me about it the entire time). It’s slightly funny he’s the one who’s apt to hide (i will admit most the time he was burrowed when he had substrate) while my eastern hoggy has been whatever about this entire situation. She even ate week of losing all her substrate. Is she happy? Nah, not really, but she never is.
I can’t even imagine, but you’re doing an epic job of kicking the problem in the bum! Gary the drama king, while Eastern girl is like, “Well, life is whatever anyways, might as well just go with it.”
@kavoll I get your point! Lol! However on the flip side, naming him PAM may serve as a constant reminder to be ever mindful never to allow another stinking little mite into the house……
