- When taking in and sending out lots of different reptiles,
there's no doubt going to be interesting people
and interesting cases that come up.
People do very occasionally send animals back.
In the past year,
two people have sent back ball pythons.
One experience was interesting
and the second experience was even more interesting.
We're starting today with the interesting one.
It's the most recent ball python that's been sent back.
I wanna do a handful of videos like this.
So let me know if you enjoy this one
and if you want me to do more,
but keep in mind,
if you were the person that I'm talking about
or if you were simply watching this video,
this is not meant to attack the person or be mean to them.
This is either for educational purposes
or literally for entertainment purposes
if it's interesting
'cause we can definitely learn off of these cases
and also be entertained by them.
There's no line about that.
So there was a ball python,
I think it was a butter or something
that came in as a pretty common morph that we get.
It was doing just fine at first.
Was with us for a few months,
eating and growing, all good and ready to find a new home.
I randomly name animals different things
if I don't know what its previous name was.
This one of course was named Paperclip.
I don't know, it was the first noun I thought of.
So this was Paperclip and it sold in October of 2020.
Like anyone that wants to get an animal from me,
they have to get verified when it comes to husbandry.
I asked what their temperatures are, humidity,
how they're doing that.
If it's over the heat mat or over tank heater,
if they're using a thermostat.
Just all the basic stuff,
their diet, pictures of the enclosure,
all the stuff that helps us see if this person is prepared
and this person was physically definitely prepared.
The enclosure looked good and everything checked out.
I was perfectly fine sending an animal.
Once the weather was fine,
I shipped it off and all was good.
I didn't hear back, which is perfectly normal.
Most people don't really update if nothing goes wrong.
Some people do like to send us pictures for fun,
but it's not expected and most people don't.
But a few months later, I received an email
that included this part, where they said,
"He spends a lot of time in a striking S-stance
"staring at me through his enclosure.
"He stops this behavior when I leave.
"But as soon as he notices I've returned,
"he starts up again.
"Every night, he circles his enclosure
"piping his nose onto all of the outside walls
"and the ceiling trying to escape.
"This behavior does not stop when the lights turn off
"though I have not watched him over night.
"So I've only seen it happen maybe four hours.
"Whenever he is handled,
"he does his best to get out of my hands
"and hisses every time I pick him up.
"I'm concerned that he's stressed out."
So yeah, all of these signs do point to stress.
It's totally normal for an animal
to really move around a lot the first couple of days
or even weeks in a new enclosure.
But if it is happening for multiple months,
there's definitely something wrong somewhere.
It could be something in the enclosure,
something in the room or something wrong with the animal.
This ball python was totally fine before.
Wasn't striking or anything.
A lot of people just don't really know how to handle them
but ball pythons are pretty easy to get going with
but I responded to get some more details
and make sure that husbandry is the same
and see if I missed anything previously.
And I also asked for pictures
of the enclosure and the snake.
I got some.
The very first thing that I noticed
is the enclosure was super dry.
It was coconut fiber, which is fine
but normally, people spray it or add water or something.
It looked like it could easily be like 0% humidity
in this enclosure, which isn't too great for a ball python
that normally, I like to keep around 60 to 70% humidity.
Also, he was in an S-position,
which a lot of people consider the striking position
but he was just sitting under the hide.
It wasn't actually a defensive position.
So in this picture, at least he was not in a defensive pose.
He was just sitting there.
They also followed up
and said that the fogger for the enclosure had broken.
Previously, I didn't actually know
that a fogger was being used.
It wasn't mentioned
and I don't really recommend using foggers.
I've used them in the past.
Actually you can see them in really old videos.
It does add humidity,
but it's so much moisture straight into the air
that is actually pretty uncomfortable.
I've put it up to myself to see how hard it is to breathe
and it feels like vaping basically.
It's kind of the equivalent of a vape pen
but just with moisture and no flavor.
And so you can imagine for a ball python,
that's probably not super comfortable.
It can easily make things too humid
and like they said, this one broke
which is surprisingly common.
And so the enclosure dried out
and they said that because of this,
they think that there's something wrong with the snake.
Its nose is bubbling.
It's got extra mucus in its mouth
and it seems to be having trouble breathing.
All these things point to a respiratory infection,
not super rare and not super dangerous most of the time
unless it's been a constant problem.
And it did not have an RI before I sent it.
So I explained how you can help
with the respiratory infection.
Oftentimes, you can and just kind of deal with it yourself
but if you're not comfortable with this,
or if it's getting pretty bad, you can go to a vet.
I'm not one to say instantly, go to a vet
anytime anything is wrong
'cause most of the time with pretty much every common animal
reptile snake problem,
you can do a lot of it yourself.
However, vets can be useful with respiratory infections.
I did say however, every vet pretty much is gonna say
do blood work.
Every time I've gone to any vet for any reptile,
they always say,
"You should definitely get blood work."
Of course, blood work is one of the most expensive things
that they offer and it's almost always unnecessary
when you're going for something
that can't possibly relate it
to something showing up in the blood
including a respiratory infection.
So I basically said,
you can go tell them it probably has an RI,
pay for an exam and the medication needed
and that's it.
And I actually didn't hear anything back,
again, most likely, because they figured it out
or it started to clear up on its own
because they fixed the husbandry.
But two months later, I got an intake order,
which means that somebody is interested
in sending me an animal.
This is common, happens everyday.
Orders are always coming in
but I did recognize the name
and it turns out it was this person
that got the ball python.
They did go to the vet and they got ceftazadime
or Tazicef that's oftentimes used for RIs
and it doesn't always work.
I've used it with some animals where it instantly helped
and others where it really didn't do anything
and actually did more harm than good.
But I don't think there's anything wrong
with using a controlled amount of ceftazadime
for respiratory infection in a reptile
but it just did not work.
So there is a pretty long line for intake kits.
Luckily, I will be taking them in very shortly
because I'm moving soon.
But even if the line was gonna stay long for a while,
I do wanna prioritize people like this
because I feel like part of the promise
to the person sending us an animal involves throughout
not just sending it out to a new person,
but making sure that we help the new owners.
And if they truly can't do anything, we give them priority
when taking them back.
We can't do it for free.
I don't have enough money to play around
to simply for free take in any return or anything.
But thankfully, this person was actually...
they did everything that I think they should
to send an animal back.
They got an intake kit.
They were ready to wait in line
but I went ahead and put this person as a priority
because this was an animal that we had actually sent them.
And about three weeks later,
we were able to set everything up and it came in to us.
But actually the day of shipping
right before they sent it to FedEx,
they said that they discovered a burn mark on the snake.
They were very surprised, very caught off guard.
I have no idea where it came from
and that the thermostat must've broke or something.
The thermostat was actually purchased from me
because I sell used supplies.
So I know that at least when I sold it,
it was working just fine.
Things of course, do break.
The thermostat I did send,
I've never had one of those break,
but anything's possible of course.
So I figured maybe it was just a small burn,
maybe the thermostat just broke
and they didn't really notice
because before they sent the animal to us,
I had them send updated images.
And in this image, it looked perfectly fine,
no burns or anything.
And I could see the full belly where they said the burn was.
So I figured it was either really small,
really unnoticeable or that had just happened,
then it's a fresh, small injury.
Either way, I got the snake here and I unboxed it.
And the moment I pulled it out of the bag,
I first noticed there stuck shed on the snake
which makes sense with low humidity.
And then we've got this big burn on the tummy
and a big old burn, it is indeed a burn.
Compared to the size of the animal,
this is the largest burn I've seen
'cause I have seen bigger burns on bigger animals.
But the amount of space that this burn takes up
on the ball python is the largest burn
that I've actually worked with.
Yeah, it's pretty rough.
I'm sure it did not feel good when it was burning.
I'm not really sure how they went by without noticing
but my guess is because they were scared
to handle the snake,
they never really picked it up and examined it.
They probably just fed it in the enclosure
and let that be it
and they just never noticed that the heating malfunctioned
at some point.
Now we've got it.
I'm not handling it in this video
'cause I don't wanna rub its stomach all over me
and possibly cause an infection
'cause the wound doesn't really open
but it's still gonna be super tender
and I don't want any bacteria around there.
So for now, it's just chilling on paper towel
but of course, I had a bunch of clips of it
on a clean surface to show you in this video.
So yeah, now it's got the respiratory infection,
a big old burn on the belly and it also has stuck shed.
Stuck shed is not the priority right now.
I don't want shed to build up,
but I also wanna focus on the burn
and not mess with it too much.
And the problem is we have to do the respiratory infection
at the same time 'cause it does have an RI.
Definitely not the worst I've seen
but it's pretty decently infected
in the respiratory system
that it is priority enough
where I can't put that off until the burn is dealt with.
So I'm gonna have to keep this thing clean,
make sure it's in the right set up
make sure it's not too hot,
and make sure to burn doesn't get worse.
And I'll be honest,
I've never dealt with a ball python that has stuck shed,
a respiratory infection and a burn all at the same time.
But I'm not crazy concerned,
I don't expect it to die
and it's sad to see that this happened.
Not every experience is gonna be perfect.
And like I said,
the customer seemed perfectly fine,
super excited, super...
I don't know.
They just seem like a pretty normal person.
I really had no red flags.
Sometimes there'll be a little red flag
where it's like maybe we shouldn't send
but then it all turns out to be fine.
But in this case, it was all green flags
and we just didn't have a great experience in the end.
So the ball python has no problems being handled.
It doesn't seem to be stressed at all.
Even in the tub it's hanging out in,
it seems to be perfectly fine
but that is the most recent experience
of an animal being sent back.
This is, I guess, part one of this ball pythons experience
not the best time
because I have so much else going on right now.
I thought this was just gonna be a quick send back
or maybe a little DIY treatment on the RI
and then ready to go back out in a few months
but it'll take a little bit more than that.
The person was very friendly.
I am definitely convinced that they cared.
They just didn't necessarily do everything right
and had a lot of problems come up
and there was no context on this little strawberry hat
but now I have the ball python's hat.
I guess I can send it back out with the ball python
to the next owner but that's that.
What do we have to learn from this?
How would I know in the future
maybe not to send to this person?
Honestly, I don't know.
I still can't pick up any red flags.
You might be wondering
when they didn't answer for two months,
when I emailed them and they didn't respond,
even myself, I was like, "Why did I never follow up?"
But this was just during the time
where there were so many emails going in.
I just never would have remembered the specific case
'cause so many people send questions.
So I guess the biggest thing that I could do different
like have a different email folder
for people that have already purchased
and maybe check through and see if anyone's followed up
'cause basically once I answer an email,
it gets archived until we need it again.
I don't actively see it.
So I need a reminder or something to...
Oh maybe if there's been a week
and I haven't responded to a health concern
or an animal they bought, maybe email again and say,
"Hey, how are things going?
"And can you send some pictures?"
'Cause it's never gonna be perfect
but that could be a little improvement there.
The others, however, the last recent was much worse.
The title would probably be something
about How the Ball Python was dropped
in a Walgreens Dropbox, which is in fact true.
And if you enjoyed this one, I can do that one soon.
So, and just know that I've got a few others
that involve lawsuit threats
and police calling threats.
So it should be fun, but that's it for this one.
If you wanna re-home your animal or purchase an animal,
you can check out Animal Skills.
In the next few months,
it will really start filling back up
and be chugging along at full force.
You can also check the description for products.
I do recommend
that most likely will not stop working,
not including foggers.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm Alex and thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)