My near FIRE experience

[Ophidia]

I keep snakes. Most people think of me as being weird because of this, but I keep them still. Most of the time this has caused no problems, and I have only come to grief a couple of times (due to small animals being found in neighboring apartments... never mind).
Anyway, snakes, being cold-blooded, need to be heated. I accomplish this by way of a certain type of heat tape called Flex-Watt, manufactured for the reptile trade. This flex-watt is 4" wide, and is 11 watts/ft.
Now, att some point in the not-too-distant past, one of my grey banded kings escaped. This is not too uncommon with tri-coloured kings, as they are very "pushy" and if there is a way out they will find it.
Well, tonight he was out again.
I lifted the box to try to see where he may have gone, and noticed that there was a hole melted-- burned, rather-- out of the bottom.
The heat tape under that box must have been damaged and shorted. I now know why the circuit breaker for that room has been tripping so easily, and why the electricity bill has been so high.
THe tape was charred and the wood underneath blackened. Me, being a stupid scheisskopf, touched the charred heat tape and got a nice black electrical burn. Sweet!

At any rate, the problem has been dealt with. I still have to find the snake, however. No heat for anyone until I am able to test the rest of the heat tape.

Cheers to my fire avoidance,
Chris

[Snailman]

We raised a Burmese python from pencil size to over 12' long. They are very strong snakes and can push their way out of almost anything. A friend of mine that had kept snakes gave me the solution. He told me that putting books, bricks or anything else on the tank lid was doomed to failure because the snake would find the lightest spot and push and what ever was holding the lid on would just slide off. I used a fish tank with indoor/outdoor carpet in it with one of those hardware cloth screens that fit a fish tank for a lid. I then got some S hooks and some drapery cord (it does not stretch at all). I tied a loop in each end of several pieces of the cord. I put an S hook in one end and hooked it to the screen lid. It then went down one side of the tank under the bottom of the tank and then up the other side where I put a S hook in it and hooked it to the screen. He could make the screen bow a bit but the frame never moved at all. The only time he got out was when we let him out. My wife was not a fan of the snake so she demanded an escape proof house for him. For heat we used a "hot rock" and we used it for years and never had any trouble out of it at all.

[hesaias]

I used heat rocks for my Gecko. Glad you didnt catch fire:D
Did you find the snake?

[billsreef]

Good luck finding the snake.

I had one customer with a missing cal king that turned up about a month later in her fathers suitcase :eek: He found while on a business trip :D

BTW I have seen way too many animals burned by hot rocks during my years in the trade to ever own one myself :(

[Ophidia]

I am anti-hotrock myself. I am now also anti-FlexWatt. I have some ZooMed UTH's attached to a dimmer that I use for the majority of my animals and that seems to work quite well. Those heaters don't appear to build up the localized high heat that the heat tape did.

I found the snake. It wa sback on the rack. The strange thing is that it did not leave the room it escaped in.

I also found a milksnake in the bathtub. Wierd.

Chris

[billsreef]

Glad to hear you found the snake. BTW was the milk a previous missing snake or is now a mysterious new aquisition?

Those zoo med UTH do seem like the way to go. I've got several and haven't had any problems with them.

[Ophidia]

The milk was in another box that I found with a hole melted in it, and it escaped from it's new box when I did not snap the lid on all the way. Oops!

One unfortunate thing, not related, is that I found my 16 year old Haitian boa dead the day before yesterday. I bought it with my confirmation money, and have had it for a long time. Sad.

Chris