This blog is about my Kahl albino Columbian Ret-tail boa, Xanthia.
I had just gotten paid from working at a haunted attraction and wanted to get a snake so I set to looking on craigslist, Shortly I found a post titled "ready to breed female albino" on 11/6/15.
I emailed them and during our conversations, I found out that she had a "small" mouth infection but still ate and bred, but the mouth infection lowered her price to half of what she would normally be since they took her to the vet to get shots for her infection. She was given 1 shot a week for 5 weeks, and it cost $100 for the round of 5 shots. I also asked for pictures as there were non in the post and these are what I got...
She also had an attitude because her mouth hurt her which I was weary of because I wanted a boa I could hold, but the guy assured me she was nice before the infection. After thinking about it for a while I finally decided to go through with it so we set up a date to meet, however it fell through. On Nov. 11th he was in the area and said he could drop her off, so I gave him the address and she was there by 2 pm.
He pulled in the driveway and put a black tub on the ground. I tipped open the lid and seen her all coiled up, her head somewhere in the bottom. I gave him the money and we talked a little a more about her, the guy said he just didn't care much for her anymore as he and his girlfriend started breeding reticulated pythons. He also told me everything about what the vet said and although its foggy, I believe he said she had the infection for a couple months. With that, I thanked him for bringing her, as he lived an hour away, and took Sunshine inside.
I had a big plastic tub that I bought until her enclosure was built by my ex-boyfriend. As soon as I opened the tub and touched her, a hiss escaped her so loud it felt like the entire house was shaking. I ended up getting her head up and she struck at me, so I grabbed the broom and used the handle to lift her out of the small tub and gently put her in the big one. She constantly hissed, to get her to calm down I put a blanket over the tub so she couldn't see anything, however if we walked by the cage for the next week, she would hiss from feeling the vibrations.
When my boyfriend at the time came home, we went to tractor supply and got Tylon 200 (for swine but known to help with infections in snakes) and needle and syringe. We also stopped at Walmart right next to tractor supply and grabbed Betadine and hydrogen peroxide. On the way home I started searching for names for Sunshine as her name was just too simple and common. I stumbled upon Xanthia (ZAN-THEE-IA), which is Greek for blonde or yellow. I liked it and it stuck.
When we got home I pulled Xanthia out of her bin and her hisses filled the room again. My ex was worried as I was trying to grab her head and she kept striking at me. I eventually got a towel over her head and grabbed her. I took a picture before I began and ill just say it broke my heart to see.
Every day I would clean out her mouth, I started with a cotton swab and tweezers. Taking the tweezers and pulling out any of the dead skin, and for the first cleaning I had to pull out a tooth that was hardly intact. I squeezed out all the infection and took a syringe with a mixture of 50/50 peroxide and water and flushed out the inside of her wound with it. A cotton swab came next to clean out the mixture and another syringe with Betadine this time was used to flush out her wound. I would let it sit for a little bit in her mouth, normally about 5 minutes while I just sat holding her head and running my other hand along her body. After it sat, I used the Tylon to give her a shot to help fight the infection further. We took a picture with her to.
She also had mild scale rot on her belly but just soaking her in the bathtub for 15 minutes per day for a week, she shed and it was gone. The next week we ended up moving to Tennessee for my ex to have a better job. I got an updated picture of her and the difference in just 2 weeks is surreal!
However, she ended up losing 5 teeth after the 2 weeks. We ended up staying in Tennessee for a month and a half when I broke it off with my ex and moved back to my moms. When I got back, I took one last picture of Xanthia and she turned into a completely different snake. She didn't mind being held, and she was nice.
She has a scar on her nose still from being kept in the aquarium with a screen lid and constantly rubbing against it. The bump on her nose has gone away though after the swelling went down. I had a point where she was super tame and I even slept with her at night, but as I started showing more in my pregnancy, I could no longer get her out and handle her as I wasn't supposed to lift over 10 pounds... Now I hope to start working with her more and getting her tame again.
Thank you for reading about my boa Xanthia, I hope you enjoyed our journey through difficult times and doubting myself that I would never be able to heal her and she would suffer in my care. Turns out I was wrong and she is my jewel out of all the other animals I have.