A Speckled Kingsnake attempted to eat himself. In other words, he swallowed his tail. He mistook the end of his tail for another snake which he hoped would be his dinner.
A bit of hand sanitizer was all it took to get him to regurgitate. When my hand approached his head, he flinched. When he flinched I inadvertently put the handsanitizer where his eyes are and not his mouth. Obviously that was accidental. The good news is that snakes have clear scales that protect their eyes, so it’s eyes were not affected by the hand sanitizer at all.
I washed him and he ate a meal soon afterward.
This kind of thing happens occasionally to kingsnakes due to the fact that kingsnakes eat other snakes. Some people assume that this happened due to stress, starvation or temperatures being too warm. It’s doubtful that any of these reasons are the case in this situation.
This snake is kept with perfect temperatures, a properly sized enclosure, places to hide and clean water. This particular snake is fed properly and is not starving.
This snake recovered quickly from this incident and is currently doing very well. In the several years that I’ve had this snake this was the only occurrence. As for the other 5 Kingsnakes that I’ve kept in identical conditions, this has never happened. It would make sense that this was simply a case of a Kingsnake mistaking it’s tail for a meal and not being very smart about it.
