- So about a month and a half ago,
I did a video on my Ball Python Sonny
who had not eaten in one year.
I really didn't make it public
so people really didn't know how long he'd been off feed.
It was certainly a shock to say the least,
I got a lot of responses,
I felt like I was doing the right thing
without taking him to the vet.
As you can see from the hundreds and hundreds,
over a thousand comments actually, people disagree.
So, with this I have to accept defeat
because I took Sonny to the vet.
We got his results
and today I'll go over all of the problems
that he actually has hidden inside of him.
Just kidding.
(happy upbeat music)
I did actually go to the vet but long story short,
if you don't want to watch the video,
here's what the expert vet said.
One, Sonny is perfect.
Two, everything I did was perfect.
Three, everyone in the comments were wrong.
(chuckles)
(speaks unintelligibly)
So, the first very important thing I need to say
is everyone that
respectfully just actually wanted to help Sonny,
you had no obligation to try and help,
people that were just trying
to give suggestions and be useful.
I still very much so respect that and appreciate that
and I hope you continue to do the same in the future.
This video is more of a told you so to the people
that said things like, you're literally an abusive owner.
You're so cheap you won't take your animal to the vet.
You're the reason Sonny is about to die.
You're a terrible keeper and nobody should take your advice.
A vet would never suggest the things
that you did in this video.
You have little to no experience
and your opinion is valueless here.
How dare you let your poor animal cripple away and die
just because you think you know what you're doing.
This is Sonny, the snake that now has not eaten in 14 months
and he still looks pretty good if you ask me.
If you gave me this snake and was like
how long do you think he's been off feed?
I would probably say two to four months or so.
Nope, it's been 14 and a lot of people just simply said
take him to the Vet, take him to the Vet,
take, take him, take him to the Vet.
So I did, I took him to the Vet.
Now all of the people that I knew more closely,
I told them I was taking him to the Vet
and they're like why? You don't seem concerned,
you seem to have pretty good judgment about Sonny.
I thought you said it was useless.
And I agree, but I just succumbed to peer pressure
and I went to the vet so I'm going to go over everything
that the vet said and did and what their conclusion was.
What my conclusion is from that,
and where we're going from the future.
So to find the right vet for Sonny
I ended up contacting seven new vets.
I have been to three different vets in the past,
I wasn't a huge fan of any of them.
Even the one claimed they were
the best exotic vet in the State,
I kind of think otherwise, based on some experiences
but putting that aside the point,
the other two weren't necessarily bad
but they didn't have much expertise at all,
so I contacted seven new vets.
Five of them wouldn't do anything with reptiles
so some of them gave me suggestions for others.
One of the vets I contacted said they would do it
but I'd have to sign a paper saying I would pay 600 dollars
before they even looked at Sonny.
I didn't really want to do that. (chuckles)
Again I was going to the vet not for my own sake
but for strangers on the Internet's sake.
But then there was another vet I found
that looks like it has really high ratings
and it was suggested to me by some of the other
highest rated vets in the State,
which means that my video about Sonny not eating
is basically supported by one of the highest rated vets,
recommended by highest rated vets.
Now they haven't seen the video,
I don't know if they even know I have a channel.
I mentioned that I make videos on them and stuff
they probably thought I was just some pleb,
like eight subscribers but that's fine,
I mean I look like it.
If they are seeing this video
then hi, thanks for checking up on Sonny.
So I go in to the vet, I explain the issue,
they're very surprised he's been off feed for 14 months
based on his health
because he has very good health for what he is.
I feel like they kind of thought
it was going to be a pretty easy procedure probably,
they were gonna be like "Yeah, just try this thing."
But I had tried everything
because I basically went over everything
that I talked about in that video
about Sonny not eating.
So they were "Okay, by far the best thing you can do
is go ahead and force feed him a small meal
so he can have some nutrition in him."
I was "Hey, I already did that."
I did that in the last video.
They're like "How did it go?"
and I was like "Yeah, it was pretty easy overall,
and he kept it down. He hasn't passed it yet though."
"So like okay, we suggest
that you occasionally continue to force feed
because you've clearly tried everything
and I went over all of my husbandry.
So my husbandry of Ball Pythons
is not officially vet approved
which is, I mean I'm not going to lie,
I wasn't looking for that approval,
I'm already very confident in my Ball Python husbandry.
There are some certain Facebook groups out there
that don't agree. I got added to a lot of them.
So I did the video about Sonny not eating.
I just got slammed by people,
a lot of which were part of this group
which were apparently gossiping behind the scenes of me
which I didn't see all that
and they were writing me all this stuff
which counteracts
what, what, what
the licensed exotic veterinerean said
because I was doing it just right
and not only that but I was doing my perfect husbandry
and then I adjusted to the husbandry
that people suggested in those groups
for the past five months.
Long story short, Sonny's gonna go back
to the husbandry that I think is better
even if other people don't.
This vet started going through
all of the procedures that I did myself.
That you can do at home
a.k.a. things that you don't need to pay 65 dollars for.
Which I actually think the prices were fair at this vet
which I'll talk about in a minute
but one of the first things that I did with Sonny
is make sure he doesn't have respiratory infection.
So how did I do it?
I pulled out my wallet, I pulled out my credit card,
I popped his mouth open and I checked down there
for any excessive saliva, or weird textures
of liquids or fluids or anything and it was perfect.
What's the very first thing the vet did?
Well I thought maybe he'd have like some fancy tool
to check for respiratory infections or whatever else.
No, he pulled out a little medical wallet thing,
he pulled out a little medical card.
It was like a credit card but I think
it had some medical stuff written on it.
He popped it in Sonny's mouth
and he checked the exact same thing.
He checked out Sonny's eyes, he listened to his breathing,
he checked out his nose,
all the stuff that I did myself
which I was pretty confident about
and then I was talking about,
so since he hasn't lost any weight,
what a lot of people were saying
is maybe there was a mass in him
that's taking up that weight.
Personally this didn't make any sense to me
because even if there is a mass,
even if he had more weight on him
it wouldn't be so evenly distributed,
like he doesn't have a little tumor
on every single inch of his body
but it would be very weird for me to have a mass,
so what I did at home is I basically,
he's still so strong, I basically kind of dug my fingers in
there carefully on the stomach and went all the way down
his body a few times for like five to ten minutes.
I did this multiple times over the course of the year
to see if anything was developing
from his neck to his cloaca.
If there were any masses in there
and I didn't feel anything,
so I was like okay, maybe the vet
can do something fancy, he did the exact same thing.
He just sat there for five minutes feeling down the stomach.
I was like, you feel anything, he's like nope,
I was like I know. I didn't say that
So then we continued to talk for a bit
about all the different possibilities which are all things
that I've already done and he clearly trusted my husbandry
which was nice because I know
that there's going to be clients when you're a vet that
are just crazy annoying
and think they're right about everything,
I was very quiet the entire time,
didn't want to influence anything that he was thinking,
or doing or saying so I pretty much waited and just
listened for everything like I had to sit there
for ten minutes while he checked Sonny for mites.
Anyway he doesn't have mites, it's also vet approved.
I'm just gonna keep saying vet approved.
I paid for this experience okay.
So then I was like okay, so what about x-rays
and blood work and all this stuff, he's like no,
there's no, he's fine you don't need to do that.
He, so when an x-ray didn't seem necessary,
I was like okay, look, I'm trying to prove a point
to some strangers on the internet. I didn't say that
I was just like well, just in case lets do an x-ray anyway
which I have, where is it?
I don't know where I put the x-ray.
I don't know why I printed it out,
I just used so much black ink,
I have some higher quality versions.
He was so excited when he came back in the room
from doing the x-ray because the first thing he said is
Sonny is perfect and that was based on, he did three scans.
Usually these scans cost 95 each, he only charged me for one
because he didn't even think it was necessary
and he was just curious himself
what it would look like in there and they're all perfect.
He didn't actually show me the x-rays,
I was like okay, these strangers on the Internet,
they're not gonna believe me, I'm making it up
so I made them take me all the way through their facility
to the back of the x-ray room so I could take pictures
of the x-rays and they're like,
we're gonna send these to you.
So they did, they sent them to me,
thank you very much. It says Sonny Green on there.
So then on the second skin of Sonny,
it was on his lower end by the cloaca
we can see just the intestines running down
to the butt
and right by the cloaca
you can see that little
hopper mouse that I force fed last month
made it through his body and no problem
no blockages or anything it's just chilling there.
It's fully digested and it will come out just as per usual
it's just taking a while for some reason
but I, here we were, we'd talked for a bit about
everything that we did, how perfect Sonny looks
on the outside, I made them do an x-ray that
wasn't even necessary. The x-rays were done,
they were still amazed at how strong and chubby,
well not chubby but how almost normal weight he is
for a snake that hasn't eaten in 14 months.
Then they also came back and he was like okay
well he definitely doesn't have any of these like 6 things
that I can't pronounce,
I still don't even know what they were.
But he doesn't have em if it has a lot of letters
in the name, he doesn't have it
And I would say it's a pretty good sign when a vet
that can make a lot of money off something very easily
specifically, basically declines to do something because
then the next thing was like what about blood work
and he's like no, it is completely unnecessary,
like just don't, don't do blood work,
he's look at how healthy he is so we've done all this stuff
you already made me do an x-ray,
he didn't say that, I'm adding stupid commentary to this
just to make it more interesting.
It was a little more medical than this
but basically I would have really had to force them
to do blood work, which, if I thought he needed
blood work I would have made them do it
but like I said before going to the vet,
I thought it was a waste of time from the start.
So before long me and Sonny were on our merry way.
150 dollars more poor which it would have been
over 300 dollars if they actually charged me for everything.
So they're very nice for that but to make up for that last
little bit,
you should have gotten an add right there,
if you didn't, you either have adblock
or you just got lucky.
That paid for the vet visit.
So I was walking out there
with an ego three times bigger
because the vet agreed with everything that I said.
Again, the people that were actually useful,
that were constructive and dealing with me personally
and were like, here's some suggestions.
Here's how, what can maybe help.
That is very much so helpful and I really appreciate that.
It's just all the other annoying people
that think they know my snake better than I do,
which I understand from an outside perspective
it might look bad if this guys snake hasn't eaten
for a year and he's just sitting around
making videos on it, putting in sponsored mid rolls
in the middle of it but also
consider it from my perspective,
this is a snake that I've seen every day
for six years, we're not like telephathically connected
but I get a pretty good idea when
something is wrong with him but the question
we're all wondering, why hasn't he eaten?
Like now what, is he just not going to eat forever,
is he genuinely Buddha, has he truly gone vegan
like the 50 billion re-used jokes that were in the comments
well that was the thing, we were like celebrating
in the exam room like yeah, my viewers are wrong
we were celebrating because he was just so healthy
and didn't need anything but I was like
oh, why's he still not eating so now what?
Well he gave me the advice that most people said
that he would not give advice on.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Continue to force feed every so often.
Can I disagree with that, no, it's already what I said
from the start.
How do I not go with it now, so this entire videos just
kind of a petty little told you so but also
people have been genuinely concerned about Sonny.
People out there right now think Sonny's dead
because I killed him by not taking him
to the vet, he's, when I did that cactus merge
drop, which cactus merge is not sold out entirely
Oh I'm not wearing it but thank you for ordering,
it's you bought it all. Everybody thought Sonny died
every top rated comment, or every top voted comment
it was like I thought sonny was going to be dead.
Nobody trusts me, yeah this was the pettiest, most childish
video I've done but I had to do it 'cause I wanted to.
Sonny will be ditching the tubs soon, I'm gonna fix up
his bio active and stick him back in there, if you
didn't know I have not been handling him for months,
just to ensure he wasn't stressed and everything.
At this point, I'll still like keep it to a minimum
I won't do it much outside of videos,
he said if I have trouble force feeding,
I can just tube feed, but there's nothing wrong with
force feeding if it's going well
and if he's keeping it down, no problem.
So Sonny's been a wonderful sport,
little does he know hundreds of thousands of people have
been watching his journey and from just dying,
I mean he just doesn't care um, now he's going to sleep
in my shirt so I have some other comments
I screen shot a bunch of my favourit comments
by far the most useful information was by Ian Rogers
who said, put lettuce. Thank you Ian, very cool.
Also, Ryan Davison said Have you tried force feeding?
Which was on the video, a lot of people just.
It was a long video, I get it but don't comment
if you're not going to watch the video.
Cough, cough
Okay you know who I'm talking about.
Peta has entered the chat, that was a good one.
Dude you are doing it all wrong.
All climbing log for ball python?
If I were you I would listen to other people's suggestions
just admit you're not perfect and take advice
from other experts.
Well, today I did just that, I finally took Sonny to the vet
and got the advice from a true expert.
That's not good by the way.
Up, okay, he's completely gone,
he is so done with your comments.
(snickers)
I'm harassing people so much today.
Well the saga's not over because he still obviously
has not eaten himself, eaten on his own terms but
I'm no more or less concerned than I was before that video
and before going to the vet because it
just reaffirmed everything that I thought before.
So that was good to see
As always I'll try and keep you updated,
you can follow on Instagram for even more updates
again Willowoak, that hospital is the one I went to and
that's Sonny. Thank you for those that have been supportive
because I know a lot of people have been genuinely
really stressed out about Sonny
whether he would survive or whatever
Which I, like a lot of times my concern doesn't
reflect in videos because I'm not that kind of person
that just upload a video the moment somethings wrong
I want to stay like, chill and collected because there's
no reason to freak you out or make the audience panic.
I'm not going to manipulate you like that
like other channels because it just feels unnecessary,
we can do stuff behind the scenes without you seeing
and then inform you of it in maybe in an entertaining or
creative way so that it's not so boring and sad,
I think that's how you truly make a positive channel
instead of just claiming you're positive and randomly
doing stuff that isn't positive at all,
but I'm really glad about all the nice messages
I've gotten and I'm really glad that I can rub it in
everyone else's face.
(happy music)