Halls of the Dark Muse

I had a reptile emergency this afternoon. Somehow or other my snake managed to get herself stuck inside her log.

I went to feed her today and I noticed that her tail and part of her body was inside the log and as she was trying to catch the mouse she wasn't moving away from the log, and my snake is a constrictor, so you know they use their whole bodies to wrap around, so it was highly abnormal that she was not moving from the spot, so I thought to myself, she can't be stuck in there can she?

And it turns out that apparently yes she could be.

I am not quite sure how the managed it, as snakes are usually pretty good at wiggling out of things, but the only thing I could figure is that one end is wider than the other, so she went into the one side and it starts to get narrower towards the other end so she got stuck in the middle trying to come out and snakes don't move backwards generally, so she was just stuck there.

At first I thought I would try to see if I could relax her, she might loosen up and be able to slip out, but that did not seem to be working and I could not get her to try and wiggle out, so in the end I took her to my reptile place and they were completely baffled by the predicament, and never quite seen anything like that before.

First they tried using canola oil and poured it through the wholes and crakes in the log to try and see if they could slide her out, but that did not work, because she got herself wedged up in there pretty good. So ultimately they had to start to saw and chisel her out, so they were finally able to break away enough of the wood to get her out and in spite of the ordeal she seems to be fine now.

And when I first walked in there was another guy in the store who was just coming in when I did, and so at first he was quite taken in by the spectacle so he was trying to help the guys try to get her out and they had called their boss, the guy who owns the store and who is an expert in reptiles, but they were able to get her out before he showed, and at any rate I am sure the incident will make a good story for all of them to tell.