DISCLAIMER: If admins feel this goes against community guidelines please remove the post. I wanted to make this post as an educational thing for new keepers, or any keeper really, to learn about what NOT to do while keeping any type of reptile or other exotics. I ask to be respectful when sharing your stories, please keep anyone involved anonymous… don’t even use fake names. I want this to be educational, not a post about slandering people!
I ask for you to keep your story at least mostly relevant to the post. And maybe add something along the lines of why what you witnessed was a bad thing and how other people can avoid that situation.
I’ll start with an example that has happened with me. It isn’t too horrible but its definitely something anyone should avoid doing…
When I was still in High-School I met this person who found a Garter/Ribbon snake at their house. They decided to catch it in the morning and bring it with them in a plastic tote to the school. They had this snake with them all day long until I eventually persuaded them to let me have the snake at the end of the school day, which I immediately released at a pond upon getting to my sister’s ranch. This person openly admitted to wanting to keep the snake even though they had no prior knowledge of any reptile care and this snake looked like it was born maybe a week before they found it.
Moral of the story: Please do not take animals from the wild with god knows what kind of diseases, parasites or anything else and bring it to a High-School or any other place outside of just releasing it back to the wild. Please do not attempt to care for an animal from the wild with no experience or knowledge of how to care for it. Not only is it dangerous or possibly life-threatening for the animal but it may also be dangerous for you and other people around you. Thank god that person at least knew what kind of snake it was… it could’ve been much, much worse.
Unless @eaglereptiles (or a larger quorum of the Staff here) disagrees, my vote is to allow this thread to stand
However, I am going to throw a couple other small ‘Rules of Behaviour’ on it
NO GRAPHIC PICTURES
Remember, there are individuals/organization that lurk in places like this to harvest images that make the community look bad. This includes, but is not limited too: bite pics, dissections, anything showing blood, amputation pics, gross bodily harm, gross neglect, etc. The only thing that might be allowed (after submission to the Admin/Mod/Staff for prior review and approval) would be valid documentation images taken by a veterinarian or doctor that are officially labeled as such
NO PERSONAL ATTACKS
I want keepers to be free to share their own personal horror stories as well and not be scolded, reprimanded, antagonized, etc., by others.
NO UNNECESSARY REPLIES/CHATTER
The intention behind this thread should be to offer education to people so they can learn. Having to wade through fifty comments of “That stinks”, “Oh no!!”, “I am sorry this happened to you”, and the like makes it a lot harder to read through and find information that may be important to those that are seeking answers
I was working at a big box pet shop at the time. A customer came in with a small Tupperware and had questions on the snake inside. They were sent over to me, as the lead in the small pets section…where I needed to explain, ‘No…I cannot help you sex this snake or set it up. This is a rattlesnake baby. It hasn’t gotten it’s rattles yet.’
Of course they then freaked and left us with the tub. Animal control was very understanding and took them to a wildlife rehab for us.
I will offer myself up on the chopping block here with a few example of things that have happened to me:
-Rogue escapee because got distracted while cleaning and forgot to close a cage door. This happened twice, with the same snake. Both times he spent almost a year loose in the house and then just reappeared like everything was normal. Moral of the story: Always secure your cages when you finish working in them
-Coming home from a week long vacation and discovering an animal half out of its cage and stuck in the venting slats. I never considered the ventilation slats might be large enough for the animal to try and squeeze through. I do not know how long the animal had been stuck there but it took me twenty minutes and a couple extra pairs of hands to free it. Moral of the story: When in doubt, cover ventilation slats with screen
-On multiple occasions, when I was in a rush while feeding, I failed to check that a live feeder had been consumed. One of these occasions resulted in minor damage to my snake. Moral of the story: If you cannot check back in a timely manner, do not offer live prey
-On a few occasions I have been guilty of taking my attention off of an animal that has the potential to cause harm. Most of these were when I had been doing presentations and I chose to look out at the audience instead of the animal. A handful of these resulted in not inconsiderable blood being shed. Moral of the story: Lack of attention puts you at risk (also, tokay geckos are NOT to be underestimated!)
-I have made the mistake of going into my chondro’s cage after lights out and getting bitten as a result of a hunting response. I have also attempted to continue working with/manipulating and animal when it was very clearly signaling that it was DONE and ended up getting bitten. Moral of the story: Not acknowledging the behaviour of an animal can result in getting bitten
This is another school related reptile thing that just came to mind for me… but with a pet this time.
I did not see this myself but it did happen in the middle school I attended a long time ago. Someone had a pet Boa, not sure of locality, that they allegedly put in their backpack and brought to the school to show off. It ended up escaping and getting loose in the school, news of it quickly spread around the school because people took and shared photos of it in the hallway it was found in. No-one knew how long it had been wandering the school but thankfully the person who brought it got it back along with being reprimanded by the school’s Principal.
I’d say this case scenario was much worse than the first school reptile thing I have on the actual post, it was a far larger species with the capability to actually hurt someone and it was loose in a school full of children who may or may not have known better to mess with something like that. The Boa went far too long without access to warmth or water inside a building thats usually kept I’m guessing between 65-72° F, it was also at risk of being killed by anyone who came across it in the time it was free. Even worse being the fact that here in Texas there is the very real potential for a snake like that to thrive if it gets free into the wild.
Moral of this one:
Do not bring any pet reptile outside for any reason other than an emergency, and if it is taken out of your home it needs to be in a secure container.
This is more of a “whoopsie” than a true horror story, but still a cautionary tale.
One of my previous roommates had a crested gecko and was having trouble maintaining humidity, so she installed a mister. In the process of installing it, there was a small gap left in the lid of the enclosure. Neither of us thought the gecko could fit through the gap…but we were wrong. My roommate came home the next day to find her crestie missing from his enclosure and was understandably freaking out, convinced he was lost forever (we had a dog and 3 cats in the home at the time). Fortunately her boyfriend found him clinging to a window curtain only a few feet away from his enclosure, so he didn’t get far and was totally fine. But the moral of the story is, use extreme caution when installing new stuff in enclosures, make sure everything is still secure when you’re done, and don’t underestimate a reptile’s ability to squeeze through small gaps.
Years ago I had a baby corn snake in a sterilite tub. I decided to add some fake greenery along the sides of the tub so I attached/secured the greenery with scotch tape. Yeah. The next morning I go to check on the animals I had at the time and there the little guy was, hanging from a piece of loose tape. Yeah. Fortunately I was able to gently remove him where he was attached to the tape. He was not injured but was I ever kicking myself.
Need I say, NEVER ATTACH ANYTHING INSIDE OF ANY ENCLOSURE WITH TAPE!
A few years ago, after finding a couple mutilated snakes around the village, I posted a flyer on the community bulletin board.
SNAKES!!!
If you have a snake or any wildlife in your yard, please call me, anytime. Do not attempt to catch or corner it. Please keep an eye on it/them and call me. Name, ph no. There is no charge for this service.
Well, one evening a lady calls and tells me she has a lizard on her porch hiding in a flower pot. There is only one lizard that could be there, northern alligator. Unless it’s an escapee. I grabbed my gloves,a bag a box and a hook. The address is only a block away. I knock on the door, the lady leads me to a snakes paradise. Bird feeders, a water feature, raised beds, compost pile and plenty of plant pots arranged around the yard. Grass a foot tall. A jumbled pile of old lumber and tin plus old asphalt shingles. I couldn’t have made it more snake friendly. I asked where she saw it last. On the veranda beside the begonia she tells me. As I walked onto the deck I noticed four little faces poking out of a pot. So, I gathered up four baby gopher snakes. And empty eggshells. She asks, why are you over there? The lizard is over here, can’t you see it? Huh? See it? How I could miss a 4 foot rattler with her brood of newborns? So, gathered her and family into the container. What are you doing? I called you to remove this f!@#$%g lizard and you’re rooting around in my plants? Confused, I apologized and asked her if she wanted to keep the baby gopher snakes and new family of rattle snakes. She looked like she was trying to grow wings. I looked around where she pointed and I did find a lizard, about 6 inches long, bright yellow and red, plastic. As I was leaving she stated that she is not paying for my service (I never charge) and how terrible I am for bringing these horrid creatures to her yard. She implied that I probably caused her little dog to die, a week prior. I stuttered through an explanation that her beautiful yard was a garden of eden for wildlife and asked why she thought I brought them with me. Well, there was no snakes here before you came here.
A week later I get a call from a fellow, who she hired to tidy up her yard, who tells me he has found a snake and can I come get it? We found two small garters, a half dozen eggshells, likely gopher snakes and another baby rattler in/around the lumber pile.
Then, of course, I was admonished by her neighbor for destroying the yard. The only things I moved was the debris pile, wood, tin, shingles, into a pick up truck.
Two years later she still mean mugs me when I see her around the village.
Two kids in our neighborhood, around 10-12 years old. My daughter knew them (our neighborhood is small so I knew a bit about them and their mom and where they lived. They occasionally would be walking around the neighborhood with “new” pets their mom got them, and aside from a feral cat, the other animals were never seen again. Sometime around Christmas a few years ago, they came to our house with a limp ball python (they knew we have snakes). They asked me what’s wrong with it. It was dead. Somehow they acquired a snake from someone and hid it from their mom in a camper on their property. A camper with no heat. They thought all snakes just hibernated and are fine and become active again when they’re in a warm environment.
Moral of the story: Ball pythons and many other snakes will not come back to life when exposed long term to freezing temperatures, especially when they are in a small tub with no way to seek out warmth of some sort.
This is very tame, though still tragic.
2 years ago I found some tadpoles accidentally for sale in a pet store feeder minnow tank and got them for free since the staff thought they were fish and were alarmed about impending frogs.
While they were still fully aquatic I didn’t see the need for a lid on their tank…mistake! One of the three hopped out (still no legs, a fully fish style jump) while I was in class and suffocated on my dorm floor
Always keep water levels low enough to avoid jumping (fish, tadpoles, etc), keep floating plants to discourage it, or use a lid. I’ve heard some species are especially prone to trying to ‘puddle hop’
The other two grew up into frogs and were donated to a state park to keep as educational animals or release
