sideways

I started breeding ball pythons last breeding season. I managed to hatch 4 snakes, and since then it’s been one reality check followed by another. The first one was lost. One time I saw it escaping, put it back, and reoriented the enclosure it was in. What was stupid is that I thought I could flick my wrist, move something a few inches, and it would be fixed. He escaped the exact same way he had almost the first time while I wasn’t paying attention. I realized even then that it takes more than passive attention to stop an animals will to power.

I had a snake who never wanted to eat. The snake just didn’t respond to a live rodent like the other 2, or like nature would dictate. It was nothing more than a warm, moving obstacle to him. To give him half a chance(that’s about the odds) at life, I started force feeding him. It’s not a fun process. You have to override an animals natural movements for it’s own good, and you certainly don’t get thanks. But he started to look better.

3 days ago, “hungry” as he was named, was found motionless, lying with his head sideways and his mouth open. Initially thinking he had died, I moved him and he moved back ever so slightly. The head continued to turn itself sideways. When I oriented him in a proper snake position, he would turn it back. I knew he was on his way out in any case. He died, and I assumed it was because of his general unwillingness to eat and live.

Unfortunately, this morning I checked on one of the healthy babies and noticed the same symptoms. He was a bit more lively, likely because he had at one point had a will to live. But the sideways head was stark. He even had more energy to put his head back sideways If I moved him. I roughly recalled a “House” episode in which Dr. Gregory house notices a rat with head-tilt and diagnoses it as neurological. Knowing something was seriously wrong and that this snake might be strong enough to recover, I took it to a veterinarian.

As you might imagine, once a peanut-sized brain is oriented sideways, It’s essentially too late to save him. He’s not going to be able to eat or drink. When I talked to the vet, I said that he couldn’t hold his head straight. But that wasn’t true. The vet told me that literally, instead of just being dizzy or not knowing which way is up, The snake thinks the way his head is facing is correct. He backed up his claim by saying that animals with head tilt will hold their head at a very specific angle.

Although upset about my certain loss, I was taken by the surreal nature of that idea. The snake is literally in a sideways world, and doesn’t know. He was euthanized, of course, but I comforted myself that at least he didn’t go out with sanity and clarity. He was completely mixed-up, quite literally. Out of pure curiosity, I spent my bottom dollar on an autopsy since he likely died of the same thing the first one did. It might have been an infection(which the non-eater was more likely to catch) or it might be genetic. But I can’t get the image and idea of "sideways" out of my upright head.


P.S. the last one is quite healthy, having overcome his slave morality.