Agreed, That’s why I said nothing is perfect. but its, the best source of information for me if not perfect.,
But also with your condition in your comment below, always double check and fact check.
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Thanks for sharing this experience with the community, verinium. This is a good reminder for all of us that even with taking the proper precautions, accidents and mishaps can still happen. It’s never a bad idea to double-check our hardware, especially when failures of the hardware in question can lead to injury (not being critical of you at all, just to be clear).
I mostly use external heat mats with thermostats, and none of them get warmer than 100F even if the thermostats fail, so not hot enough to burn, even if my snakes somehow ended up sitting directly on top of it with no barrier. I do use a CHE for my sand boa, but it’s used externally over a very sturdy mesh screen, so there’s no risk of my snake coming into contact with it. I’m thinking about upgrading to radiant heat panels at some point.
I hope your girl recovers quickly and completely. The scabs look pretty typical to me of burns on mammals that are healing properly…but I have no idea if they should look different for reptiles. I don’t have any experience treating reptile burns. 
But it sounds like you’re being very vigilant, attentive, and level-headed about her treatment, so it seems like she’s in good hands.
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The best sign is the dark red color with no discharge. All signs point to no infection (from what i can see). As long as no infection sets in, its just a matter of keeping her on feed and clean water and she should heal just fine, my only worry is the pale splotches, but i think those may be first degree burns from touching the bulb, but not areas that wrapped and held on.
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This is definitely a valuable thread. It demonstrates so many of the positive things about this community. Sharing experiences, sharing and discussing ideas without ugliness or acrimony. Caring so much about the animals, as well as we people who keep them. @Verinium, I’m so sorry that you and your girl are going through this. I’m thankful that you’re sharing it with the community. Prayers for speedy healing!
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I appreciate it, and im glad it served its intended purpose to show that we all can make mistakes and to always double check setups and equipment as time goes on :). Im sorry that it happened tk my poor girl, but sharing my experience prevents it from happening to even 1 animal, it would have been worth it even if i did catch hate. I have thick skin, and I know i should have paid better attention, so if there was anyone with harsh comments, i would know them came out of anger for the animals pain, and not out of unbriddled hate.
Fortunately for the most part, we are all very respectful on here as long as people are respectful back 
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here you go lol the second picture they posted
In all seriousness though I hope she gets better soon!
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Hello all, its been about a month and i figured some of you may be curious as to how she fared.
I would love to be able to tell you guys shes completely healed and good to go, however her burns were pretty serious, and so they are still healing and will likely need another month or two before all of the scabs are gone, and she will likely have the scars for the rest of her life.
That said, it isnt all doom and gloom, while she isnt fully healed, she is making great progress healing. She just finished a shed, so here is a good indication for how her healing is going. The graphic warning isnt really needed anymore at least haha.
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She’s looking SO much better! She’s healing up really well. Glad she seems to be through the worst of it.
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Aww, thank you for the update! I’m so glad she is well along the road to recovery. She really did get herself messed up. It seems so weird to me that reptiles will burn themselves that way. I know that it happens all too often. I guess that’s not something their nervous system ever needed to handle in nature, but it still seems odd.
Hooray for healing!
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Yeah, that’s always seemed odd to me. I know there’s some debate about how reptiles experience pain, but I mean…they do feel it, at least to some degree, and you’d think an animal that’s evolved to use their environment to regulate their body temperature would have a little more sense when it comes to avoiding temperatures extreme enough to seriously injure or even kill them. But as you said, I guess it’s not really something they’re likely to encounter in the wild, so it’s not something they’ve really evolved to deal with.
I’m really glad the CHE I use with my sand boa is external, because she likes to check out the screen directly below it. Fortunately the screen doesn’t get hot enough to burn her, and there’s no risk of her coming into contact with the bulb itself. I have no doubt that she’d burn herself on the bulb repeatedly if she could get to it. 
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Ill throw up some pictures tonight she is doing well still. The scares basically became black scales.
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Shes in shed currently, but otherwise doing good, i notice some pink, but i believe thats where she had herself wedged into her cork hollow. Ill check again tonight to be sure.
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I’m so glad that your baby was so lucky. Definitely looks a lot worse than the burn actually was. Might just need a little extra help on shedding for the next couple cycles. But healing up great!
I have a rescue that has nasty scars all down his tummy still from the worst burn I’d personally seen. The only thing we could think of was the heat pack shifted in shipping. He’s a bit handicapped from the experience from the muscle damage and scar tissue
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The burn was actually pretty deep, this is after a year of healing, shes had plenty of shed cycles since the incident. But she is certainly lucky, i wasnt sure shed make it with how deep the burns were.
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Oooh! I didn’t catch the dates for some reason!
To be honest though, I wish my boy had the burns this baby did. The only part of it I guess being ‘good’ was that he was painful so he didn’t move very much so it helped heal up faster.
This is what we were dealing with:
Warning for graphic photos of course.
It’s so frustrating that sometimes the thing they need most is also the most dangerous. Although I admit a small part of me has to laugh in hindsight about how they love to show off what they’re doing wrong while we’re freaking out and trying to figure out how to safely unwrap them from HOT thing.
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Happy to see she’s improving. Definitely wasn’t a pleasant thing for either of you to have to deal with, I’m glad she handled it like a champ.
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Oof! Yeah, the belly is the worst spot for it! At least since it was my girls side and a bit on top , she could still lay down fairly comfortably and move. The belly has to be terrible for them
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Thanks! Yeah shes definitely doing alot better… even if she is fiesty and ungrateful xD
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Wow THAT is a horrendous burn! Glad your boy has improved and is thriving, even if he might not ever be 100% again
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