‘IT WAS DISGUSTING’: VETS MAKE SHOCKING DISCOVERY INSIDE SNAKE
WHEN Iffy Glendinning first graduated from veterinary school, she never imagined she would come across animals ingesting diamond earrings or puppy pee pads.
But since gaining her qualifications in 2019, the vet technician, who works at the University of Queensland’s animal hospital in Gatton, has been consistently surprised and intrigued.
“I generally work with birds, reptiles, small exotic animals and wildlife so you never know what species are going to walk through the door,” Ms Glendinning said.
Over the course of her career so far, Ms Glendinning has treated an emu who swallowed a pair of diamond earrings, a penguin from SeaWorld who was under the weather, and performed surgery on a bilby.
The most surprising encounter was when the owner of Gloria – a green tree snake – was brought in after she swallowed an entire puppy pee pad.
Gloria, who uses the pads as bedding, was enjoying her lunchtime meal in her enclosure in December last year, but when her owner returned to the room, he noticed her pad was missing.
“When snakes strike at their food item, which in this case was a rat, they tend to wrap their entire body around it so we can only assume the pad was mistakenly wrapped up in the process too,” Ms Glendinning said.
“Snakes do not go out of their way to ingest foreign objects but they do not tend to notice a difference in the taste or smell and just swallow everything all at once.”
Fortunately the owner realised the puppy pee pad was missing and made a quick trip to the Gatton animal hospital.
Ms Glendinning said due to the quick response, Gloria showed no symptoms as the pad had not made its way into her stomach.
It meant the team of four staff members and intrigued onlookers were able to anaesthetise the pet python, pass a flexible endoscope down the oesophagus and retrieve the pad using a pair of grasping forceps in just under an hour.
“We were very lucky it was a recent meal as we would have had to perform a very invasive surgery otherwise,” Ms Glendinning said.
“Gloria was fast asleep throughout the whole ordeal and woke up feeling like a champ.
“When we pulled the pad out the rat actually came out as well – it was disgusting.”
Ms Glendinning recommended pet snake owners to use natural fibre bedding like newspaper instead of plastic based items.
While Gloria’s case was solved relatively quickly, the vet technician said if items were not removed timely, it could result in infection, illness or death.
She said certain materials could also wrap around the intestines.