Friday, October 7th. I'm preparing the terrarium for feeding my couple of Broghammerus reticulatus (what a terrific name, thanks to R. Hoser). The female named Gundula is about 6 meters and 100 kg, the male a bit over 4.50 meters. They live in a terrarium 350/170/180 cm, adapted to the main terrarium is a "hiding cage" which measures 130/110/120 cm.
My feeding habits have always been the same ones for the last couple of years, the large female beeing fed in the bigger, the male in the smaller part.
On this day, things started to go wrong with the snakes sitting in the wrong parts of the cage and not ready to change place.
I decided to feed only the male, laying in the bigger part and started to separate the cages. This can be done by moving the top of the hiding cage one or two centimeters to get a small slit, where a vertical gate can be pushed downward.
Feeding the male in the hiding box has been done extremely careful in the past, knowing the snake as sometimes aggressive and waiting for rabbits falling "from the sky".
Before unlocking and moving the top of the hiding box, I watched the female and found it laying on the floor, properly coiled, calm and in no way alert.
Then I made a fatal mistake. Believing the female to stay on the floor and not to react in any way (she's never been fed in the hiding box and I didn't have any contact with rabbits or rats at this day), I obened the top more than necessary, maybe 7 or 8 centimeters. Moving the gate downward with my right hand, I suddenly found it in the snakes jaws and myself in very big troubles.
It took only one or two seconds for the snake to come out completely, pushing away the unlocked top of the cage. Next scene found myself on the floor in front of the terrarium, with some loops around my stomac and upper legs, but fortunately both of my arms free (except the right hand), as I instinctively held them upward at the beginning of the attack.
Next thing to remember was relief, as the snake's unfasten the upper loops around my stomac. Well, I thought, she's recognized her mistake. Actually, I was in error, as I found the upper loops wandering upward to my chest and suddenly beeing tighten again (these guys really know what to do)
At this time I recognized myself to be in danger and started to think about a way out of this problem. There hasn't been fear or panic at anytime (thanks to Adrenaline) and I was able to think clearly.
I decided to have only one chance: to get my hand out of the snakes jaws. Fortunately, I managed to remove the upper jaw almost completely and finally to pull the right hand out of the mouth (there was absolutely no pain at this time.
Now things went very quick: Just beeing released from the jaws, the loops were beeing untightened and the snake moved away almost that fast as starting the attack. Maybe I had some assistance by my small dog, biting the snakes tail.
Next action, catching the dog, out of the room and stopping the bleeding. Then back to the next problem, a giant retic, finding it's ways free in my house. I grabbed the snake on it's neck and led it toward the terrarium (there was still no pain) where the "monster" crawled in without any problems. Here it was again: the "good girl", free from any aggression, as I knew it for 6 or 7 years before.
Final action: Emergency call and a drive by ambulance to my doctor.
Discussion:
a) Reason of the attack
Reticulated pythons, as other pythons too, react instinctively. Beside of "normal" feeding stimuli such as presence, motions or odor of prey animals, prey-attacking behaviour can be triggered off erroneously by small, not always noticeable stimuli or combinations of them too. This can be a motion of the caretaker, a shadow, a vibration, the temperature of the caretakers extremeties and so on.
If once triggered off, this chain of "programmed" action steps (biting, wrapping, pressing) can hardly be stopped or interrupted. Even animals, which have been known as "tame" or friendly for longer periods, can change theyr behaviour completely within parts of seconds.
In our case, maybe the motion of the gate and it's vibrations, the sudden change of lighting conditions, the temperature of my hand or a combination of all this might be responsible.
I have to declare strictly, that the female has never been fed in the hiding cage and I didn't have contact to any mammals before.
b) reactions on attacks
I know coming out of this "enbracement" was based largely upon luck.
Nevertheless I believe that instinctive reactions were involved too in this final happy ending.
As a keeper of mostly "hot" animals, such as venomous snakes and big pythons, i' m spending a lot of time thinking about how to avoid accidents, but how to react on them too.
I spent many hours in the past staying in front of my retic terrarium, regarding my "monsters" and considering how to react on possible attacks.
"Hands up" in order to keep the upper extremeties free sounds plausible and it worked in this case.
It won't be a "live insurance" in every case, because of two reasons:
first, after "removing" the bite, these animals often stop wrapping and pressing, but they don't have to do so in every case, and
second, if bites are situated on the body trunk, they might be covered with loops and cannot be removed, not even with 10 hands.
Sometimes we hear or read about alcohol as support to release snakebites. It's a myth and it won't work on big pythons, gallons of alcohol won't affect a giant retic in it's killing mood after it's deadly work has been triggered off.
Nevertheless, alcohol could be useful after a bite to disinfect your wounds or as a painkiller.
c) conclusion:
(to be continued later)
Wed 12 Nov - 18:47
(This was stupidly despite always using 24" tweezer tongs for this purpose, every time before...) 