Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[stargazerlily7]

she's been doing so damn well. she's been eating, no more bloody diarrhea, nice and active, shedding whole, etc etc etc. now this is the third episode of tail biting (march, august, and then today). last time i put her in her 5 gal carrier tank and she stopped, so now i just put her in and we'll see, maybe for whatever reason the wires that get crossed in her head dont get crossed while she's in a little tank. i don't know. i was hoping keeping her in the 20 gal instead of 30 might help... just changing environment, a bit less room, etc. its been a couple of months but she's doing it again. i don't know what to do with this girl. i really love her, it kills me to see her sick over and over and by now this is really a chronic problem. and i'm so terrified she'll do this when i'm not around and end up eating her tail and killing herself. i don't want her to die like that. but each time we get thru an episode she has a few good months in between, i just can't see putting her to sleep because of such an infrequent problem. i really just don't know what to do. nobody can find a cause for it, nobody knows what's wrong with her so there's no way to fix it. and time obviously isnt helping. some people are telling me it might be better to put her to sleep so she doesnt end up dying in such a terrible way, while other people are telling me that all i have to do is get through these episodes and she'll be fine. but there's obviously something wrong. i'm just afraid every time i look at her because i know it'll happen again. what do i do???? please, i need advice, opinions, suggestions. please, anything would help..........

[lol93]

Have you seen a vet?
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[Budsteam]

Is there anything that snakes hate the smell of? maybe a scent deterrent might work - just a thought

[stargazerlily7]

yep, i've seen my regular herp vet several times, plus the vets i work for (i'm an LVT) have consulted with specialists they know, and i've called a few other herp specialists. no one's ever heard of this and everyone looks at me like i'm crazy when i tell them what she's doing. she's been on several courses of antibiotics, i sent out fecals on her, she's been dewormed twice, we did a barium series last time (and the xrays also confirmed she's not eggbound and has no visible spinal lesions). the smell deterrent is a great idea, except i have no idea what snakes hate the smell of. anyone know?

its friggen impossible to keep a bandage on a snake. and it took her about 15 minutes in the 5 gal before she started going after it again. a lot of people are thinking its a neurological problem. she's had this occasional odd tail-twitching thing, where it flips and wiggles around like a worm you just cut in half. (though she didn't bite it when that was happening) and she tried to bite my mother yesterday while she was holding her. she's never tried to bite anyone before. maybe it's just stress, though she got through the 2 courses of SQ baytril injections (which have to be painful), plus a bunch of oral dosings, without ever biting me.

she looks like she's in hunting mode sort of, she'll come across her tail, sniff it, fixate on it, she'll move forward as it moves away, and then she'll grab it. (and once i see her fixating there's no distracting her) and then once she grabs it she starts rolling and thrashing around the tank in what looks like simultaneous attempts at killing the thing in her mouth, and trying to get away from what's got her tail. usually i have to grab her and hold her head to get her to release her tail. the first time this happened, it escalated over a few hours, at first she'd grab it, spaz out for a second, then release it. and then by a few hours later she wouldn't let it go and she was chewing along it trying to swallow it. it took two of us to get it out of her mouth. thats when i bandaged her tail the first time. she's not underfed, everyone who's seen her agrees her body condition is perfect. good weight, muscle tone, no skin abnormalities, nothing odd on manual palpation. no reason why she should be trying to eat herself.

well i'm rambling now, sorry. i guess the background info helps, maybe someone somewhere will have a suggestion.

[Drymarchon32]

To be honest it's the first time I've heard of this and I'm flabbergasted to say the least. Great description of both behaviour and treatment. The question of what to do however is a toughie for sure. My initial thought was similar to Bud's in scenting the tail not to smell like food, but finding something that will work when the biting is infrequent is difficult. If it was all the time you could test a variety of things.
However something is confusing the snake big time and sounds neurological. You have done faecal tests but have you done a blood test at all? There are some nasties out there that can cause nerological issues but most are usually chronic and fatal, not periodical. Therefore I would suggest it's something either hardwired in that particular snake, most likely(have you had her since hatching) or a cyclical parasite that affects behaviour when the levels get too high, not so likely. For this my only guess would be haemogregarines which should show up in blood tests(similar to malaria in that it invades cells). They are apparently quite common in reptiles and I have heard of them in both snakes and lizards. Strangely enough it caused nero problems in the lizards but was also fatal.
I'm really just shooting in the dark, and you did say any suggestions and I am no expert but I am ceratinly intigued to find out what is causing this, you have my sympathies. If you want suggestions on smells that snakes hate I would try garlic or onion or similar lingering smells.
Good luck
A
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Complacency killed the keeper

[stargazerlily7]

hey thanks for the thoughts. i was thinking about doing bloodwork last time this happened but my herp vet said he didn't recommend it, because of how stressful the collection process was. but i wanted to then, and i still want to now. so i guess i'll make an appointment w/ him.

you're right, the scent thing is hard, because it's so infrequent. it's months and months in between, and there's no way to predict when it's going to happen. the good thing is, it seems to not last too long. she did it last nite, and by 4am she had the bandage off, and she's in a 10 gal by my bed so i can hear anything "bitey" going on even when i'm sleeping, and she hasn't done it since the bandage came off.

oh and she was full grown when i bought her at a pet store 2 years ago. she's 4 and a half feet long, captive bred, but they didn't know her age. not even sure she's a "she" as i've never had her sexed. pet store told me she was but who knows.

besides bloodwork, other things i'm toying with are starting her on pred, maybe dosing her regularly via mice, in case its some brain swelling that occurs periodically thats pressing on the wrong area and causing the confusion... or keeping something like ace or diazepam on hand to sedate her when i see an episode start... it seems like if i can get her through like the first 8 hours after the first bite, she'll be fine again for a while.

i just don't know what to do about the times i'm not around. she's coming to work with me tomorrow. i can take her in whenever i need to watch her. but she can't come with me everywhere i go. i feel so lucky that i've been there every time it's happened. i wish i saw some connection to the incidents, like some trigger, but nothing occurred right before them every time... different times in her feeding schedule, different times of the night (first one was around 1am, this last one was around 8pm), no chemicals around her before any of them, i hadn't handled her for a few days before each episode (and i'm SOOOO careful when i handle her not to have any chemicals on my hands. as a general rule i only handle her right after a shower). anyways my point was that i'm terrified she'll do this when i'm not around to stop her and she'll end up choking on her own tail. the thought of that makes me want to put her to sleep but i just can't, i love her so much. its strange how attached one can get to a reptile. never really thought i would, but i am. she's such a wonderful snake, and other than these "episodes" she's fine. i'll just never be able to forgive myself if next time or the time after that i'm not around and she dies like that. and when i think about that i feel like euthanasia is the most humane thing to do...... (and i feel awful even thinking about it)

[Drymarchon32]

[new-b]

Hope you get everything sorted with her, our thoughts are with you.

Hannah x

[stargazerlily7]

ok we went to my herp vet today and he drew blood. he did a cardiac stick instead of using the caudal vein, he didn't want to mess w/ her tail and risk starting her up again. he said otherwise she looks great. she put on 50 grams since august. good news all around. hopefully bloods will show something.... if not its just one more rule-out. and i brought home some diazepam, next time she has an episode i'm going to try sedating her. hopefully w/ chemical restraint i wont have to bandage her tail and the whole thing will pass with a lot less stress. *crosses fingers*

[stargazerlily7]

blood work results came back today. i could kick myself for not doing it sooner. no blood parasites, but calcium, phosphorus and uric acid are significantly elevated. WBC count's a little high. total protein, AST, and sodium are high too. he consulted with another herp vet in the area, they recommended first repeating the bloodwork to make sure its "real and repeatable" (is that normal? maybe because everything's so abnormal? we don't do that in cats/dogs unless its something that gets significantly elevated w/ stress, like glucose...) and then do xrays of her caudal half. she's on baytril again in case she has a kidney infection. we'll see what the bloods and xrays show. if her uric acid is persistently elevated i guess i'll start treating with allopurinol and fluids (how do you give fluids to a snake? they don't have much SQ area.) he thinks the elevated calcium might have something to do with her reproductive state (so i guess its time to find out if she's really a "she"). anyways thats all, just giving an update for anyone who's interested. i have an appointment to have more blood drawn next week.