Today I've got a snake with me that a lot of you know, her name is shadow and
She has the record for the most snake escapes out of all my animals
So today I thought I would use her to talk about snake escapes
The reason I thought this would make a good video is because
snakes getting out of their enclosures and getting loose in the house or in the environment is
Probably the biggest reason that people especially parents or landlords or whoever are not very comfortable having snakes in their home
So whether it's their kids or their client or whoever is not allowed to have them because they're scared is going to end up loose
Wherever. This is much less common that you might actually think although it is possible
Just like how many things are possible in keeping animals
But I think the reason this is thought to be probably the most concerning thing with keeping snakes
is because any time a reptile makes the news like half the time it's because the animal escaped and the other half is because the
Animal killed someone. There's, I mean, is there ever any positive news about reptiles?
Email me some positive news articles about reptiles so that I feel better about us
But they make good headlines because it's very convincing to click on
Whether- especially if you like have a fear of snakes or something
You're almost more inclined to fuel your own fear by finding negative things about it
And so that means that this news very quickly spreads all over the place and it gets very popular
So that means when your kid comes up and is like hey, I think I want a snake
What's the first thing you're gonna think of? Of course just anything that you know about snakes. What's that going to be?
Probably the news articles that you saw scrolling through Facebook about some 18 foot snake that escaped
Even on YouTube and other platforms in the reptile community people love to really milk the fact that snakes escaped
You know who I'm talking about. I'm talking about Brian (ss:wrek)
When does he not do it, it's like as most popular videos are all about snakes escaping
That probably doesn't really help right off the bat as a first impression when you're coming into the reptile community
That's probably not very fun to see and it was like a year ago, maybe a little longer. One of the time shadow escaped
I did a video on it
Because she ended up getting gravid because she found a male rat snake under her house
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go watch that video
But originally I had the term escaped in the title
And I realize that's pretty bad to have because I'm just helping fuel that and really annoying
Stereotype, I guess so I removed that from the title a while ago so that it hopefully doesn't have such negative impact obviously
Snakes do escape sometimes. How do they do it? And how do you avoid it?
And is it really a problem that you actually have to worry about when keeping reptiles?
so you should definitely worry about it because you want to be able to avoid it and
Most of the time it can very easily be avoided but there are some reasons that they most frequently do get out
So I've had a handful of my escapes myself. I've never had a permanent snake escape every snake that's gotten out of their
Enclosure the far majority were found within like 30 seconds
if not
They were found within like a day or so
Very- not very far from where they originally were supposed to be and I don't keep anything venomous
So like just sticking your hand around the house trying to find a snake is not as big of a deal as if I were
Keeping like Cobras or something. Speaking of which that's also something you'll see on the news a lot
Like I specifically remember it was like a woman who's Cobra got out
So she just like stuck her hand under the dresser and what she got bit because she wasn't thinking it through (ss:karma is a cobra)
Let's go ahead and move on to how snakes actually escaped their enclosures. So it is true that they love exploring
They love finding little places and they love migrating to find even more places
This means that they will take advantage of any hole that's in their enclosure. So shadow is a pretty thin snake
She's a colubrid. They're like, unlike pythons or Boas
They are usually pretty slim and they can squeeze through very small things smaller than you would really expect
You also have to keep in mind that there's a lot of muscle in this animal. So
They can push the lids off some what easily
There are very easy ways to keep this from happening which I've got to in just a minute
But first let's talk about what they can actually fit through. So you see this you probably things like yeah
She's like say an inch in diameter. So anything bigger than an inch, she can't fit through. Well her head
foreshadow specifically is
Probably a bit smaller than an inch and she will happily try and fit it through whatever once that fits through
Well, she doesn't want to go through my fingers
but when she's there she can really just squeeze her very flexible muscles and her bones are somewhat flexible like although they can't like
tie themselves in a knot they can bend a little bit so as
She squishes. I don't want to squish her but even applying just barely any pressure
You can already see there's a lot of squishy movement there
So if she wants to get through something and she forces her way through she can really flatten down quite well
Which means she can fit through things that are deceivingly small
That you don't think she'd be able to fit through. So that means when you're setting up an enclosure
Make sure that basically anything that's not a screen if there's like holes as for ventilation or whatever
really double check and make sure they genuinely cannot fit through this another common example as to how snakes actually get out is
When something is broken in the enclosure and you don't realize it. One time there was a screen
It was like a used enclosure someone gave us and it turns out the screen that was hooked on the top of the enclosure
Had like a flap on the side
Because the glue gave out or something and so the snake could just push up on the screen and it wasn't opening like that wide
but they could just slide right out of so it's definitely good if you get anything used, especially enclosures to
Really thoroughly check that and make sure that it is perfectly snake proof
Once you make sure there are no holes or slots or whatever
You have to make sure that everything is secure and cannot be pushed. Slightly more expensive
enclosures often come with
Latching lids where they just slide into place and you hear them lock once they're all the way pushed
you can even put a lock on many of them with a key or whatever or a
Padlock if you wanted to to get like super careful, so no one steals your snake and snakes cannot (ss:that's a good choice alex)
one of the nice things about using locks is
It reminds you that you've always put the top on
Because one of the most common ways is you simply forget to put the lid back on the enclosure
If you only have one or a couple enclosures, this is very rarely going to happen. Hopefully never probably never
But in my case I have had those times where I have like 30 enclosures in the room
I'm like doing stuff at 3 a.m
Because I put it off and I need to clean and stuff. If I'm like really tired rushed through it
I want to get it done and whoops
I either didn't slide a lid all the way or I didn't put a lid back on
Or I did not put Clips back on to a lid
These reptile clips go on to lids that simply lay on top of an enclosure and don't latch
for example
if you're using an aquarium with just a lid that falls on top a snake can usually push that out if they can reach the
Top. No, they can't just like directly climb glass
Like they can't just stick to glass or something
But they can usually find things that help support thumbing you to the top this means that you want to make sure that I live
This lie on top either is clipped close with some latches. I'll link some in the description
you can get them on Amazon for like $4, or you can just put heavy stuff on top like a couple textbooks or
Boxes or rocks or whatever, bricks as long as they're heavy enough to where you can like
Clearly not push the lid off then you should be good
well
as long as you have an undamaged enclosure with a lid that either latches or clips or just is weighted down and
You don't forget to put it back on
There's there's really no risk. That's pretty much the only way a snake is going to get out something
I completely forgot to mention is the fact that I've left doors open multiple times, like especially this one
I don't know why and oftentimes if the snake doesn't even move. They're just content where they are
I've done the same with ball pythons and stuff
So just because you leave something open doesn't mean they're even gonna want to leave
Because they might be perfectly fine where they are as you can see here. You have to remember that there's
thousands and thousands of snakes being kept all over the place and
It's very easy to pick out those few that do escape here and there
And make news articles into them or videos
and again, the most frequent escapes are when people have very large collections where it's very easy to just like
miss one thing as you're going through because mistakes are going to happen no matter what you're working on and
When you have more animals
There's a higher chance that you're just going to accidentally pass by a tub and forgot-forget to like
Push it back in or forget to slide a lid on or whatever
But it's very easy to get into that habit
again
the best way I've found to remember to make sure to close everything is to use actual physical locks because that like click you'll just
Remember when that lock clicks on? I don't know
it's just like a very nice physical way to actually get that muscle memory of remembering to put that lid back on and
When a snake does get out
They're not gonna look for people to kill or eat
They're not gonna look to go like attack you in your sleep
All they're gonna want to do is hide and stay safe and maybe come across some food along the way
In my snake escapes, I've had they are often in basically the same place a warm dark
Comfortable place whether it's like in your laundry or under another enclosure or wrapped up in a chair or around a pillow
Something like that
That's like the best place to start out when looking if you do get a very unlucky and have an escape
Remember not to panic just like take your time and very melodically search every inch of your home
So is a snake escaping a valid concern?
Definitely you should be concerned about anything that would negatively impact your animal or your experience with it
but is it something that should stop you or prohibit you from getting a certain animal
As you could tell my answer is no just be careful. Keep track of it. Even if you have another person in the house
Feel free to just like let them double-check everything make sure it's all good each time you're done in there
But most of the time it's very easy
To just get into the groove of always making sure the enclosure is closed and the animal is in there when you're not supervising
Also something I should mention is snakes can go quite a while being outside their enclosure
Some people have had a snake escape and it'll show up like an hour later
Like that's usually what happens with me, but people have kind of snakes escaped where they just like hang out
I don't know behind the fridge or something and it'll be there for months and
Like half a year later, they show up, they're thinner, but they're perfectly fine
So it's very impressive and that's why you shouldn't give up if you do have an escape
you can be patient and be careful and be thorough with your searching but you might have heard like
24 hours after somebody is disappeared or after your dog is disappeared
Your chance of finding them has gone from like a pretty decent chance to like no chance that's very different with snakes and reptiles
They can be gone forever and then just randomly show up someday perfectly fine
Then it's really not something that you need to have on your mind not something you need to anticipate
Or worry about and something that could happen just like many of the other flukes that happen in any hobby or any pet keeping
experience
But it is something to keep in mind and I'm glad you watch this video
to know more about it so that you are prepared and
hopefully a bit relieved if you are concerned about that, but
In the comments, let me know
I think
It's something that would be good is people, like whenever something bad happens, you let it know
But if you have not had a reptile escape, maybe mention that in the comment section, too
So if you have feel free to but if you haven't maybe mention that also so we can really see
Here's a poll, why not do a poll. Have you had a reptile escape? (ss:lots)
Yep, okay. So there we go. That's shadow. The master escape artist hopefully to be contained forever from now on
But those things do happen, sometimes hopefully this video helped. Let me know what else you want to see videos on
That'll be it. I'm Alex and
Thanks
for watching (ss:ily shadow)