Freeze, the Checkered Garter Update

[garterchick]

A 10 hour hand warmer which is all I could find.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

A 10 hour hand warmer which is all I could find.

Okay. Thank you for being honest. Now I am going to be honest. That right there, is your biggest mistake. And no matter how you look at, it WAS highly irresponsible to do so. The only heat packs you should be using are the uniheat packs (or if there are any other brand that is the same thing) which last something like 48 hours, distribute heat slowly and evenly, and are made specifically to ship live animals. They cost something like $2.00. They can be ordered from many distributors online. Hand warmers get out of control hot! And heat needs to be consistent the entire time, not just for 10 hours. The reason you use a heat pack that lasts 2 days, is so if the box is delayed for a day, the reptile still has a chance. This snake would have been dead for sure had there been any delays. Even without delays, 10 hours is not enough... they are in the box for at LEAST 18 hours. Truthfully even properly packed this shipment may have failed. Heat packs will fail if the temperature drops below a certain point. Generally unless you're lucky, and you get a week of mid 50 degree weather (like we had here a week and a half ago) shipping this time of year is a big no-no. Even at the temps that Greg says were forecasted, I would not have shipped anything because it is close enough that a temperature drop of even a few degrees below the forecast would be bad. Reptiles die all of the time at the hands of the inexperienced shipper. At least this one didn't, and now that you know, you will be able to take the lesson away from this mistake and hopefully it won't happen again. Honestly on most forums you would be slammed really, really hard for this. Luckily, this forums is a bit on the soft side.

[chris-uk]

I felt it, it was really stiff. Like he had just swallowed a block of wood, if he wasn't frozen, I don't know what it was.

Then you'll have to face the fact that you didn't know what you were seeing and feeling. Did he feel brittle? Was his skin so hard and cold that your fingers felt like they were sticking to him? The fact remains that if he had frozen he would not have recovered. Therefore, based on your most recent update on the this little guy (i.e. that he seems to be recovering well) we need to discount your earlier observations which made you think he was actually frozen.

I knew not to warm him up too quickly, that's why I used my hands as opposed to breathing on him or putting him in a warm cage. It's like when you are working out in the snow, and you come in and run hot water on your hands it is EXTREMELY uncomfortable. I warmed him up over about 2 minutes.

This, "I knew not to warm him up too quickly", followed by, "I warmed him up over about 2 minutes"... Two mutually exclusive statements. You knew to warm him slowly, yet you did it quickly.

Is it possible that the cold might have kept him alive? I know that when someone gets a finger cut off, you are supposed to keep it on ice until you can get to a hospital.

To answer your first question - No.
If you know about packing a dismembered finger on ice for the trip to hospital, you'll also know about the importance that the finger should never come into contact with the ice. Many fingers cannot be reattached because someone knew half of this and just dropped a finger in a bag of ice. Direct contact with the ice freezes the flesh and kills it.

If he wasn't frozen, what were the SOLID chunks along his body? They felt like ice. Plus how about if he hadn't been frozen long enough to destroy the tissue? Honestly It is about 1/5-1/4 the length down the snake. I wasn't sure of the heart location either, so I took the brightest light I had, and shined it through him (he is albino, I could see through him) and located the heart (it is longer than a human heart).

I'd go with Shannon's "your imagination" and feeling what you thought should be there.
As soon as tissue is frozen the cells start breaking down.
I'll try the bright light with my albino, I'd not realised how much detail would be visible right up against a bright light.

The irreversible damage is caused the exact moment the water forms into ice crystals. Water expands in volume when it freezes. To see what I mean fill a jug COMPLETELY with water until there is no air left. Freeze it. The jug will be either really distended or may even crack open because the ice expands it so much. This same thing happens on a tiny basis inside of cells. The water turns to ice, expands and ruptures their cell membranes.

Not only the pressure from the increased volume, but at a microscopic level the ice crystals are sharp and piece the cell structures. I vaguely remember a histology lab session where we looked at various tissues freezing.


I'm glad that this little garter has survived his trip, but I'd like to think anyone reading this thread will realise that garters don't survive freezing and takes all the precautions necessary to prevent them facing a similar situation.