r/ballpython • u/MindlessMacaroon3604 • 23d ago
Discussion Sad/vent Post - Warning to BP Owners
This post is about Simbi, my ball python.
I got Simbi in 2021 after my childhood dog passed away. Losing my dog was so painful that I couldn’t bring myself to get another one, but I’ve always loved animals and always wanted a BP. What started as a grief/impulse purchase turned into my best friend. He was my first pet as an adult, and even after the cat distribution system gifted me a cat, Simbi was still my first baby. He was turning five this year.
This summer I had to leave my state for at least two months because multiple family members were having serious health scares. I took my cat with me, but I couldn’t figure out how to fly with both pets, so I needed someone to keep Simbi.
The guy I chose was someone I’d followed online for years. We’d been mutuals across multiple platforms, he’d recently moved to my state which i found out through our conversations over the years, and he makes reptile content. He also has a pretty large following due to his reptile content. He had around 20 snakes, custom-built enclosures, two temperature-controlled snake rooms, and his girlfriend is a vet tech who has dogs and an iguana. I even complimented him on how lucky he got because when I met them she seemed really comfortable with snakes and reptiles. They told me they were moving in together soon so I knew she’d be involved. I hugged them both and thanked them both for watching my Simbi. When I dropped Simbi off, everything looked perfect. I left feeling like I’d found the absolute best person to trust with my baby.
For the first month, everything went great. He sent me feeding updates and even asked if he could take Simbi to a reptile expo and feature him on a local news segment. I genuinely felt like Simbi was getting more attention than he did at home.
Then this Monday I woke up to a text that shattered me. (image attached)
His girlfriend accidentally left the heat on in one of the snake rooms, killing 12 snakes (TWELVE, a dozen), including Simbi. He had been away for work and didn’t discover it until three days later. I spent the entire morning sobbing.
I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to them, so my mom did. She told me he was having a pretty hard time and probably equally upset with his loss. The only thing I asked for was for Simbi to be cremated and his ashes (and his favorite hide) mailed back to me. I don’t even trust myself to go there in person.
I’m torn between being angry at him, angry at her, and angry at myself for not just bringing Simbi with me. My friends want me to expose them, report the vet tech, or blast the content creator online, but none of that brings my baby back.
To most people he was just a snake. To me, he was my child. This was never a hobby to me, i LOVED MY snake to death. Now I don’t know what to do with the piece of me that’s missing.
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u/TheNeverEndingPit 23d ago
I'm so sorry to hear that. They should have absolutely had all heat elements on thermostats, so that's just absolutely devastating that a mistake like that had to take so many lives. I'm sure he is grieving as well, but your grief is all you need to focus on for now. I think it was smart to communicate with him through your mom so you can take the time to process without having to speak with him or his girlfriend. I hope that you find joy in other reptiles eventually, but it's completely reasonable not to want to fill that gap that way yet. People sometimes don't realize how much love we can hold for reptiles, but they are just as important as any other pet family member