My corn snake died... :(

[froggsong]

I'm so upset. I was having trouble finding appropriately sized feeders for him when I ran out of newborn rats and elected to try a fuzzy mouse, which was bigger than the rat pups I'd been feeding him. I was worried it was too big, but I went ahead and tried it. It was too big for him and he regurgitated it, and I bought some pinkies and was going to feed him two, but when I went to feed him today I found him dead in his cage. He was my little guy... I'll miss him so much. I feel so terrible. I think it must have hurt him somehow when he regurgitated the fuzzy. I can't believe he's gone...

[Vasill_SVK]

Hi, I´m sorry. But the reason he died maybe wasn´t the size of that rat.
Maybe that rat was ill or something, or maybe snake had an illness but you didn´t know about it.

BTW: If your "feeding item" is too bigjust kill it, froze it and than cut to size you
need.
One on the local breeder is doing it for a long time and he has like 400
baby snakes a year.

[froggsong]

I don't know why I didn't think to cut the darn thing in half... I'll remember it next time if I decide to get another one.

Thanks for the response. It makes me feel a little better. I know that generally if they can eat it, it isn't too big, and he kept it down for a full day before regurgitating it. It's certainly possible that he was ill, I'd had him for over a year now and he was barely any larger than when I brought him home. I was on a longer feeding schedule than most people would use, every ten days, but he still should have gotten bigger... I don't know. I'll most likely over analyze this like I do with anything. My husband basically accused me of starving the poor guy to death because it had been three-ish weeks since I'd run out of the rat pups. I know that he doesn't know about snakes, but it still made me feel like I killed my poor guy.

[stimpy]

Sorry to hear about your loss :-(
It is always sad when we lose one of
our "family members",that's how I think
of all my pets. Don't beat yourself over
this.Sounds like Masquerade may have
been ill for a while.

[Nighsliv]

Yeah I doubt it was anything you really did, if the guuy(?) hadn't grown almost any at all in 1 year he probably had some kind of defect or other problem.

Still I'm really sorry for your loss.

[froggsong]

Thanks for the kind words you guys. I really do appreciate it. I haven't lost a pet in a long time, and this was unexpected. I'm starting to feel better about it though. I've talked to some people that know more about snakes than I do, and they said the same thing, if he was still so small, he likely had a defect and would have died sometime soon regardless. Still, it was a shock... I really loved that little fellow. He was so beautiful.

I'm still not sure if I want to get another one. I know that I'm not quite ready to take his tank down though...

[darc]

Awww... I remember when you got him : (

Sorry to hear that,
-darc