My apologies in advance if you also read rec.pets.herp, where I originally posted this.
This morning I went to an outreach at an elementary school down in Seattle. There were only two herp society members there, myself and a gal who raises monitors.
I brought 2 snakes (Mistake #1), one of the corns I'm halfway housing (the big lumpy one, he's a sweetheart), and Mooshoo my milksnake. The other gal brought her Savannah Monitor, Nefer (
http://tinyurl.com/8s7l).
After she and I had both spoken and displayed our animals, the teacher asked if the children could gather around a table and touch/handle the animals. We were in the library and were offered a small round table to display on (Mistake #2).
The kids gathered 'round, and as Mooshoo was still all wiggly I kept him lying on the table (Mistake #3) and allowed the children to handle the corn snake. The Savannah was also on the table (Mistake #4). One kid took the corn snake and turned his back to me, so I reached out and said "please face this direction so I can keep an eye on the snake" (Mistake #5).
At this second I heard 30 kids *GASP* all at once, and looked down to see....
THE MONITOR HAD CHOMPED ONTO MY SNAKE'S HEAD!@@!!~!~@@!~@!!@
I grabbed the monitor and pulled him off my snake, who immediately started bleeding. I left and headed to the bathroom to rinse off the wound, and he promptly crapped all over the sink and my arm. He was blowing blood bubbles. At this point I became internally very calm and externally the faucets
started flowing. I went back and got my things and thanked the other kid for holding the corn snake... and took off to the closest vet (weeping my eyes out like the emotional mess I am lately).
The vet, Dr. Kamaka at the Bird & Exotic Clinic of Seattle, was awesome. The service was great. They determined he had a hairline fractured skull, a near-missed eye, one tiny puncture through the roof of his mouth, and a torn up lower jaw. They sedated him with Ketamine and gave him two stitches in
the lower jaw. Man, a sedated snake sure looks/acts like a dead snake! They were very glad he sustained no eye or esophogeal damage... and hopefully we'll stave off the effects of nasty monitor bacteria with Baytril.
They showed me how to give him an antibiotic shot... unfortunately I pricked myself with the needle before the shot and my finger immediately swelled up. It's quite black and blue now. Apparently me and Baytril don't get along so well.
Pictures available. Not for the squeamish. The last two are at home, after sedation and sutures.
http://www.cnw.com/~fr0glet/mooshoo/
(I still can't reach fr0glet.org, although I'm sure all of you can. Grrrr!)
snake trauma/tragedy/mistake # 347983
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