Escaped !!

[ercnan]

Well it finally happened and need some opinions aside from a complete demo. of the house .
My little royal (now aptly named Houdini) found a weak spot in his top and got out.
He was there Fri. evening and missing last night.
Still in the searching process, but thought I would post a quick thread for some other options.
I've put out a mouse as "bait" in the area of his cage with a hole in the top big enough for him to get at the mouse, but small enough as to keep him in after he eats and swells. He should be hungry since it's been two weeks since his last feed.
Any help would be great.
The search goes on...................

 

[santoury]

Just be patient. He will be found where you least expect him. I've found them in the strangest places.

 

[CTU2fan]

Good luck. Check under everything, around baseboards, under sinks and in corners. Anywhere that's a tight fit that he could wriggle into to hide, that's where you're likely to find him.

And sant is correct, they do turn up at the oddest time. I had a baby Cali king once that I got in December, and he escaped probably 2 weeks after I got it. Well months go by, it's June, and I get this frantic phone call at work from my roommate/ex-girlfriend that my snake is in the apartment, and of course she's flipping out. I said "What snake?" as my only snake at the time was a ~10' retic, and she says "the black & white one". So I tell her to catch it (yeah, right). Well she saw him go under the baseboard and when I got home I put a box out with a f/t fuzzy and sat up waiting...he was out & eating the fuzzy in a half hour or so. So basically this king was out for 6 months, I have no idea what it ate or drank. It had grown some but not much, but it wasn't thin/emaciated at all. Of course the snake had basically become a "wild" snake as 90% of its life had been spent free, and it stayed nippy forever.

 

[ercnan]

Thanks for the replies so far.
I've been spreading out from his cage area, but my concern is he got in a wall.
The basement has finished insulated walls, but no ceiling yet. His cage is only about a foot below the top of the wall, so he could be in the insulation curled somewhere. I'm thinking he used the clamp lamp to get up there since it's clamped to a joist, and it's on, so he may have been burned to boot. Since he's only about 18 inches, he could be virtually anywhere.
Man I hate the thought of opening up the walls, but if he 's in there, I'm not sure he could get back out. A last resort, but doable if needed.

 

[elevatethis]

99% of the time, snakes that escape are found within a 10ft radius of their enclosure....he won't go far....check near heat sources - computers, mini-fridge, tv, stereo equipment...check in places where you'd think "oh he could never squeeze into there" - they can.

 

[davo]

I agree, they tend to end up pretty close to the escape point, at least for a while. They tend to follow the edge of things and obviously best time to look for them free roaming is night. People use toothpics around corners or carrier bags or flour of doubled sided sticky tape to make it easy to see where it has been/hear where it is etc. Remember if you don't find it straight away, you might even find him a year later, and it'll be very pissy. Good luck with the search, it's a pain.

 

[ercnan]

Thanks. I started on the wall sections closest to his cage, but no dice.
Since my stepson's room is down there and it does have a ceiling, he might be over it where I can't see him. Guess I'll just keep checking the "bait box" that I put up there.
Just hope he finds the mouse before the cat finds him.

As I go back downstairs singing "come out, come out, wherever you are"................ and "ollie, ollie, all in free"..........................................

 

[ShadowBass]

You may or may not find it. Like everyone else said usually they'll stay close for a little while, but eventually they might find a way out of the house.

I had a corn that escaped once and was found two streets behind our house. Luckily someone that wasn't scared of snakes realized it wasn't native (I lived in ohio at the time) caught it and brought it into their house. One of my dad's friend's happened to know this person and when she showed him the snake he remembered us missing one and called us. When we showed up the snake was fat and healthy, had obviously eaten, but she hadn't fed it so I guess it was eating mice and stuff outside, lol.

Sadly though, this snake escaped again a couple years later (dumbass that was staying with my parents opened the cage freaked out when it crawled towards her and then ran away without latching the doors ). Like 2 years after it escaped someone found it dead behind our apartment building. I'm not even sure how it wintered that long since that's far north of the native range.

Most of my other snakes I've found in my house. Only other ones to completely escape were a couple formerly wild snakes that we found severely injured and took in. Obviously they had no trouble finding their way outside.

 

[TheBloodyIrish]

Sadly though, this snake escaped again a couple years later (dumbass that was staying with my parents opened the cage freaked out when it crawled towards her and then ran away without latching the doors ). Like 2 years after it escaped someone found it dead behind our apartment building. I'm not even sure how it wintered that long since that's far north of the native range.

I got corns in my basement and breeding too... not even sure who were their original owners.

 

[sprwoman1]

When my snake got loose (years ago) I found her curled up inside a folded blanket on the second shelf of a bookcase about 3 ft away from her cage. It was a blanket she was familiar with though. And I did not find her untill after I was done going insane looking everywhere.