Letters to you

Netscape.com has now become a yahoo-like entity where they have newsfeeds and such. On their list of headlines, I spied the following headline:

Rocker's Snake Eats the Wrong Thing
(Dead link removed)

Sadly, the story does not surprise me. I'm assuming by the size that it's a redtail boa. These are not the sharpest pencils in the pack. I've had Wednesday totally miss the prey and attempt to eat her rug. But it never occurred to me that eventually she could succeed. My goodness.

Edit - wellp I read the story more carefully - they're saying the snake was an albino python, and not a redtail. But it's too big to be a ball python, who usually never get over 5 feet. The most common albino pythons I've seen (who are dumb enough to eat a heating pad) are Burmese. But 8 feet is way too small for a Burmese -those can get about 25-30 feet long. Unless, of course, it's a baby. In which case, if it's already devouring "The Wrong Thing", then I shudder to think what it will be eating when it grows to full size.

Did some research on my candy corn snake's name Asherra, and found this:

(dead link removed).
Not spelled the same -- I was spelling it phonetically.

"Asherah" was a mother goddess in ancient Assyria and Israel, and probably long before then. She was strongly associated with trees, and eventually came to symbolize or be somehow connected to the Tree of Life in Hebrew mythology and also with the Kabbalah.

This particular snake (Asherra) gave me some trouble and I thought she wasn't going to make it. For more on that, see the "Mouse Butts" entry in the memories section... her other body expired the previous year from exactly the same malady... She since overcame the problem and is doing well.

I had heard the word "Asherra" in some context - I think someone was reading me a passage out of a book, but never connected it with historic records of the tree goddess. Knifty.

Last November I got a couple of little corn snakes (Seraphim and Asherra. Seraphim did fine and I still have him - he's getting nice and fat, and has about doubled in size. But Asherra didn't make it - he was tiny to begin with, and couldn't keep anything down and eventually he died. This was December or January when Asherra died. I put him in a little baggy and put him in the freezer. The ground was too cold and hard back then to bury him, but now I don't have that excuse. He's still in the freezer. I'll get around to it. Really I will.

So wellp anyway, last week I was at a pet shop and saw a little snake that looked just like him. I took him home and called him Asherra Version 2.0. I'd talked to several people who advised putting the snake in a smaller habitat - that sometimes being in too big a tank stresses them and they throw up - so I put him in a 5 gallon and after a day or so fed him, and then just waited. Sure enough, up came his dinner. Same exact problem. I checked for blockages, soaked him for a while, and then let him rest for a couple of days. Then I tried feeding him again. Still the same problem. This time I'm going to wait a week or so before feeding him again and give his system a chance to rest, and maybe soak him every day. I really hope I don't lose this one, but I think I might. Ag.

Update: I fed him after several days, and he threw up again. I waited several more days and he pooped so he digested part of it. Hopefully he digested enough not to starve to death. I waited another day, then decided to give him smaller portions. I cut his dinner in half (that was one of the less pleasant tasks I've had to do lately). He ate it right away, very hungry. Because it was smaller, he seemed to have a much easier time getting it down. Hopefully because the portion is smaller, he'll digest it before his body rejects it (that's the theory anyway). I'm not sure what's wrong, but I think it has to do with his digestion being too slow and whatever he eats starts to spoil before it's all the way digested. I heated up the room but that didn't help. I added moisture and made sure he had plenty of water, but that didn't help either. We'll see if the smaller portions help.

If the smaller portions doesn't work I've run out of ideas. I'll have to take him to the exotics vet. Maybe he's lacking an ensyme I can give him or something. Chances are they won't have a clue what to do, though, so I hope this works.