Mini heart attack

Just got home from work, and went to check on my young ball pythons. I normally like to see what side of the tank they are sleeping in, and clean any poop. Well I went to my pied girl and noticed she wasn’t in her hot hide, so I glanced in her cool hide and couldn’t really see her. BTW, I keep my BPs in Exo Terras that are 40 gallons. I decided to lift the hides up to verify and sure as hell, no where to be found. I freaked out, started removing all the decor. The very last thing I removed was her water bowl, which is a large corner bowl, and there she was, under it. I have a few inches of substrate in the enclosures, and she must have dug her way underneath it. I wish I took a pic because I thought it was funny afterwards, but at that moment I was just extremely relieved. I would have never thought she would burrow under her bowl. Anyone else experience a mini scare with their reptile that made them freak out?

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Something like that happened with one of my brothers ball pythons.
He couldn’t find him, and it turned out he managed to squeeze himself behind the foam wall.
Well, the walls gone now and the little guy is fine.
We still dont know how he did it to this day…

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When I first got crested geckos they seemed very fast and escaping and whenever you don’t see them immediately or don’t remember if you closed the cage doors or they find a new hiding spot after a month of having a favorite spot to sleep in is always panicking. Another time was when I first got leopard geckos and I was moving a leo from a 45 gallon aquarium to a tub with paper towel substrate and she didn’t want to come out of her hide(the kind with an enclosed bottom that you can pick the whole thing up) so I picked the whole hide up and just put it in the tub and when I checked the next day I couldn’t see her anywhere and since it was a small tub I was panicking removing everything and since I was inexperienced with reptile keeping(about 9mo at that time) I was extremely worried and when I was taking everything out I took out the paper towels and there she was, just lounging around under the paper towels as if nothing happened lol.

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My power was out for a week after the last hurricane. All my reptiles chilled, it doesn’t get that cold here but no hot spots, anyway when the power came back on and I was checking everybody I couldn’t find my Jeweled lacerta. Took everything out of his tank, he’s tiny and is living in a 5 gallon tank. No lizard, I started digging, pulled out all the plants… He had dug down and was napping in a corner.


Little dude is about 3 inches long, mostly tail.

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He’s lovely, too!

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Ha :rofl: I’m sure they do it to scare us.

I’ve had a few reptiles do that. OMG is it scary, but so funny after

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A long while back, I had my first ever reptile, a sub-adult ball python escape. I found her 5 days laters roaming around in my basement. She had made it out of her enclosure, into the wall, down from my 2nd floor room into the crawlspace under the building and from there into the basement.
I was lucky I found her too, this was in late fall when temperatures were beginning to drop.

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