Python lost ... and found.

[NicG]

Hi guys,

I thought that I'd relate a story about the last 24 hours in the life of Eloise, my 3yo Diamond Python.

Only recently, I'd remarked (somewhat naively) to my friends of mine that now that Eloise was 6 foot long, I let her wander around my house unsupervised for periods of up to half an hour. I figured that she was big enough that I couldn't lose her and she usually stuck to the same patterns of exploration anyway.

So of course, the inevitable happened and she disappeared. I wasn't overly concerned because I was sure that she couldn't get outside. Also, she's a bit of a guts and goes into 'alert' mode when she smells a rat a couple of rooms away, so I figured she'd be easy to lure out of hiding.

But things didn't quite pan out as I'd expected and after a few hours of placing the rat at strategic places around my house, surrounded by plastic bags, she still hadn't surfaced. So now it was time for the flour and to turn the lights out. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning and found that neither the rat nor the flour had been disturbed.

I decided that I would work from home today and step up my quest to find her. After a while, I found that my earlier assumption was incorrect - upon closer examination there was a hole in the wall under the pipe at the back of the toilet. I was pretty sure now that she could have gained access under the house if she had found it.

So I went outside and checked out the 2 foot high door that leads under the house. As expected, since I hadn't opened that door for at least 3 years, it was full of spider-webs, which I spent some time removing with a pole. Next I put on my painting clothes and disposable gloves (don't I sound like a nancy-boy?!) and rather unoptomistically crawled under.

Surprisingly, it took me less than a minute to find her! I moved aside a couple of bits of timber and there she was. So a happy ending, but I got another reminder that you should never underestimate these pets of ours!

Anyway, I think I've prattled on for long enough. I'm off to poly-fill a hole in the wall! Feel free to share some lost and found stories of your own ...

Cheers,
Nic

 

[mertle]

My hubby didn't close the door on my Maccies enclosure while I was away working last month.

Still havn't caught up with the little fella :-(

 

[MoreliaMatt]

hehe thats funny! glad you found her!

 

[gaz]

its amazing what they can do, no wonder they're nicknamed "escape artists". I lost my 4ft carpet ,when i first got him, for 2 days,same thing, no escape to outside, turned house upside down trying to find him.Eventually found him in same room he escaped, the 2nd night on top of window. He hadnt even left the room? What a horrible feeling, not knowing!

 

[Hoppa1874]

yea.. well my mum didnt put the tank lid on properly on the first snake i had.. so i lost him and havent found him.. spewing!!! i guess he got outside. we have lots of gaps here.. dam dam! boohoo..

 

[mitchdiamond]

i bet you were spewing

 

[Chrisreptile]

a few years back when i went on school camp for 3 days, i came home to find my brother had stayed home all day from school to spend half an hour looking for the snake. as soon as i put my bags down i started looking and found it within 15 minutes in the same room. it was in a behind some books.

 

[warp81]

good ending to a good story

 

[NicG]

Yeah, you start wondering just how far they could have gone, in spite of the fact that they usually aren't too far away.

And once she'd gone through a whole night on the loose the paranoia starts setting in! I started thinking that she must have made it outside somehow and would be at the neighbours by now ... who is surely waiting with a shovel!

 

[tempest]

I started thinking that she must have made it outside somehow and would be at the neighbours by now ... who is surely waiting with a shovel!

Thankfully I've not lost my DP and hopefully I won't *touch wood* lol. That would be my biggest fear though... neighbours with shovels! Even though they know Zeph, I don't think it would matter, I think they would be react before thinking :shock: :?

Ohhh yeah, glad you found Eloise, NicG!

 

[ALLANA]

The first python I ever got was a baby Mac and well long story cut short I had no idea about snakes at the time, got bitten by it was terrified etc etc, mind you it wasn't even a foot long, anyway one day I came home and couldn't find it in it's cage anywere, so of course seeing as though as I was terrified of this little python lol, I can laugh about it now, I grabed my kids took them outside *in case it was hiding and attacked them lol* now I looked back it wouldn't have mattered anyway it couldn't of done any damage, and yeah turned my whole house upside down, spent hours, and couldn't find it, I was so distraugh and my poor kids were screeming to come inside, anyway after ripping the house to shreds and having hart failure, I found it still in it's cage hiding in a tiny corner on the roof lol it was that small, don't worry not scared anymore have a lovely 5fth boy BHP now, talk about jumping from one end of the stick to the other

 

[NicG]

The other thing you do when you can't find them after a while, is start thinking that they must have squeezed through ridiculously small cracks or holes!

If only GPS locating implants were a viable option. To know where they were within a couple of metres would be very handy indeed ...

 

[B-Factor]

I've got only 1:

When I was younger, I had a ball python that got out of a 'securely' plugged hole in his cage and I couldn't find him for 2 weeks in the house. Then one night my sister across the hall called out my name in THAT voice you know the one and it turns out that he was looking for a snack I suppose and was licking her face. At some point she must have learned that it wasn't a dream...LOL. My sister is kind of a tuffy girl thanks to me and just shrugged it off.

 

[Tatelina]

Glad you found him safe and sound! And that he didn't eat any baited mice while down there!

The first python I ever got was a baby Mac and well long story cut short I had no idea about snakes at the time, got bitten by it was terrified etc etc, mind you it wasn't even a foot long, anyway one day I came home and couldn't find it in it's cage anywere, so of course seeing as though as I was terrified of this little python lol, I can laugh about it now, I grabed my kids took them outside *in case it was hiding and attacked them lol* now I looked back it wouldn't have mattered anyway it couldn't of done any damage, and yeah turned my whole house upside down, spent hours, and couldn't find it, I was so distraugh and my poor kids were screeming to come inside, anyway after ripping the house to shreds and having hart failure, I found it still in it's cage hiding in a tiny corner on the roof lol it was that small, don't worry not scared anymore have a lovely 5fth boy BHP now, talk about jumping from one end of the stick to the other

hahahaha I can just imagine some kids wailing to get inside.

 

[Hickson]

Someone I know recently lost their 10ft olive python for three days when it slipped through a small hole in the wall and was living inside the walls of the house for three days before it finally came out.

And years ago I remember at Taronga, one of the reptile keepers had just done the reptile show and came back into the reptile house with the herps in the their bags, put the bags down for five minutes to deal with something urgent, and came back to find that he hadn't knotted the top of one of the bags and a large Boa Constrictor had gone a-wandering. Four keepers thoroughly searched the Reptile House, and it took us half an hour to find the damn thing in an office under a desk curled around a hotwater pipe.



Hix