RIP to my most interesting house guest

So how do you tell if a snake is dead?

That's the question that I've been pondering this weekend. You see, for the past eight months I've been fostering a six-foot-long corn snake for my friend Kirsty, who has been working and travelling in Thailand. At 18-years-old, Nyoka was a geriatric and Kirsty wanted to find him a nice caring place to stay - rather than risk re-homing him with a reptile rescue centre.

Nyoka when he first arrived

And she did warn me that at some point during his stay, he might kick the bucket.

As house guests go, Nyoka has been very little trouble. Defrost a mouse for him once a fortnight, poke him every so often to make sure he's alive, and that's it - job done.

Unfortunately, on Saturday afternoon, Nyoka didn't respond to my poking.

Uh-oh. I lifted his tail. No response. Nothing. I leaned in and stroked his head. Again, nothing.

"Oh sh*t," I thought. 

Gingerly I lifted him out of his tank and curled him onto my lap, like a giant Walnut Whip. Usually when picked up he responds with interest, but this time he was lifeless.

"OH SH*T," I said aloud.

My initial thought was one of intense guilt. I'd made him sit through a Notting Hill movie night the previous evening, and had I known he was in his final hours I would have chosen something more profound. Was it Hugh Grant's slightly-stale English fop routine that had sent him over the edge?

And how do you know when a snake is dead anyway? I can't couldn't check his pulse.

I decided to pop him back into his tank and leave him overnight (I stayed at Anna's on Saturday night anyway) - on the off chance that he would make a miraculous recovery.

But when I got home from work last night I found him still prone, exactly as I had left him.

An apologetic email was sent to Kirsty, who responded very kindly, saying he was very old and had been expected to die soon anyway, and thanking me for looking after him.

And here comes the supermarket-free tenuous link.... I popped to my local pet shop, Hasland Pet Supplies this morning to pick up some hay for the bunny, and got chatting to lovely Judi, the owner.

Interested rabbit

She was kind enough to ask after my hangover after reading yesterday's blog, and then I enquired whether she knew much about snakes. Or more specifically, whether she could spot a dead one.

"Well I'm not very well up on reptiles," she pondered. "But he does sound pretty dead to me."

So that was that. I went home and dug a small but deep hole in the back garden, and then myself and the rabbit (who'd always been very curious about the snake and was keen to get involved), committed Nyoka to his final resting place beneath a pretty-ish little pink bush. 

I resisted the urge to bury him with a bell, just in case, but did give him one final poke (just to double-triple-quadruple-check he was gone) before covering him over.

You can't really bond with a snake - they're not exactly cuddly - but I was still a little sad to see the end of my most interesting house guest.