Have you ever lost a pet? (as in the pet escaped)

Hipporex

Hipporex

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
I am very sad to say that my corn snake Echo appears to be missing. :((Echo - ZooChat) This was his fourth escape. During his previous he was always found within two hours of us noticing him missing, but this time it has been over a week since I last saw him. After each prior escape I uped security on his tank but each time he still managed to get out. Finally I bought him a completely new tank and lid, thinking I had solved the problem, but alas I was wrong. I have searched my house high and low. In fact on the day I noticed him missing, I stayed home from school to spend the entire day looking for him, yet I was still unsuccessful. I suppose there is still a small chance he'll show up someday but I fear this is very unlikely. Before anyone tells me that I should of done something differently, just know that odds are I've already thought of it as I'm really beating myself up about this. (If I'm gonna be completely honest, I full down broke crying the other day, and I'm not usually an emotional person, but I mean, I loved that little guy.) :(

So what about you guys? Has any of your pets ever escaped?
 
I'm sorry, I hope he turns up :( I don't know much about snake behavior so I don't have anything to suggest, I wish I did.

I had a very shy rat go missing for several days. I thought he might be under the kitchen cabinets - didn't know there was open space under them until then, it was accessible from going under the oven or dishwasher - so we pulled out both appliances and put down treats, with no luck. I finally had one of my best ideas ever. I put yummy jam all over the back of my other, super friendly rat and sent him under the cabinets. After a couple of minutes he came trotting back out with his buddy trailing behind him, trying to groom him and get some jam.
 
I’m sorry to hear of Echo’s escape. My cousin in England has one too and they’re increadible animals.

I had a Green and golden bell frog escape once. She’d only recently come onto land (metamorphosised) and I didn’t anticipate she could climb so well. I was aware of a small crack in the lid but never thought she’d find it. She did. Luckily she went no further than the bathtub and was recaptured within the hour.

My friend lost four Budgies once. His father fed them that morning and turned around, not realising the cage door was still unlocked. He turned around to see the last one fly out. They were last seen progressing across the sky towards the centre of town. They were never seen again. :(
 
I'm sorry to hear about your snake escaping and I hope your snake still turns up, Hipporex. It is a reptile so even after a week it not impossible he could still be alive and might still turn up somewhere. So I wouldn't give up hope yet. I don't think I can offer any help, but I do believe that snakes like warm and moist spaces as well as small hiding spaces.

I unfortunately have had two escapes with chickens. Both happened with my Brabanter chickens that I have had since 2015. The first happened in the fall of that same year and concerned the rooster of my 1.3 potential breeding flock.

Now these Brabanters are (or certainly at the time were) much more stressy and flighty chickens than I've had before, and this breed is also slimmer built and much better at flying than your average chicken. The rooster got out when I stupidly let the gate open just a bit during feeding, alongside with one of his hens, which I ended up plucking out of patch of stinging nettle, at my own expense, of course - it was quite warm and I was wearing a T-shirt with short sleeves - and I would say deservedly so. The rooster however, I had to give up on after hours of searching the stinging nettles, brushes and corn field behind our yard. I did see him again the next morning, flying away about as well as any wild gallid bird would have, and didn't think I would ever see him again.

I got real lucky though that time, as eight days after the escape our two houses down the street neighbor noticed the rooster running around the yard of his family's farmhouse and was able to lure the (probably hungry) rooster into a shed with pigeon feed, then catch him and put him in a box to return him.

In 2017 I had another case that likely happened in much the same way, although this time with offspring (one and probably only time I bred them) of my Brabanters. I didn't even notice the escape in this case until I found one of my young hens (fully feathered and independent from the foster hen at the time, but still with plenty of growing to do) missing later on, and I never fully found out what happened, so I'm only going by a likely scenario here. This time I wasn't quite so lucky and I never found the hen again, she likely fell prey to one of the neighborhood cats (she was well within the prey size range of a domestic cat) or perhaps some bird of prey (we do have sparrowhawks and buzzards in the area where we live).

I have been much more careful with the gates since, especially around my Brabanters (and they have admittedly calmed down a bit since), but there have been a couple more accidents (mostly mistakes in closing gates, followed by wind blowing them open) since, luckily all of them were quickly solved.

Mistakes do happen, even around pet animals, and as we are all (presumably) still human, we cannot prevent every last one. As long as there isn't deliberate cruelty or neglect of essential prevention measures, we shouldn't continue to beat ourselves up about these.
 
Thanks you guys for the kind words. I too hope he shows but but as it has been a week, and our house is relatively small, I feel that by now he is either in the walls or made it outside somehow. I'm sorry to hear about your guys' cases as well.
 
I hope your snake turns up again soon.

When I had a blue-tailed tree lizard Holaspis laevis, it managed to escape by jumping over my shoulder while the tank was open for feeding, ran out into the hallway and squeezed into a tiny crack under the skirting board. I thought for a time that I would never see it again, as the skirting board opened up into a large area beneath the floorboards; it was over a month later when my brother found it basking in the hallway next to the skirting board it had crawled under and managed to recapture it. So there could still be hope that your snake may come out by itself.
 
The first animal escape I ever had was Glass Bloodfin Tetra jump out of the tank. I'm sorry to say that didn't end so well for him.

I had my White's Tree Frog escape once two, but he was found very quickly.

Occasional chicken escapes happen to, but never for more than a few minutes.
 
I've had 3 escapes -all of which you should find hopeful.

When I was about 8-9 my hamster escaped. I figured he was in our laundry room (which was also a very cluttered storage room). I put out his wheel and food and water. I could hear him at night running on his wheel but for about 2 months every time I would enter the room he would run away. Finally did catch him.

I had a dog that was not socialized at all when I got her. She came to be inseparable from me, but never really cared for other people. I never leash trained her she would follow me and come whenever I called. When I visited my girlfriend at the time (now wife of 27 years) she would sit in the front yard for 15-20 minutes then bark to come in.One day some kids
threw some fire works at her and she took off. She lived on the streets for 3 months before animal control caught her and I found her at the pound.

My third one was a common green iguana I had. I never kept her in a cage but she would run around my room/apartment
I shared with other guys in college. One day she punched through the screen window and escaped. My complex was
adjacent to a 6-7 acre park that had a line of trees about 15 feet wide than ran for around 100 yards. She lived there
for months and months. I would hear the blue jays gathering and harrassing her but could not catch her. Twice I climbed
trees and sawed off branches but she would jump and run away. It got to be early fall and I knew she wouldn't live through the winter and then I got my big break. I saw her in the highest tree -about 50 ft high which was right by the road and a little isolated. So I did what anyone would do- I called the fire department and surprisingly they sent out a cherry picker. Me and a fireman got in and zipped up high and above her and came down and I was able to nab her!
She never looked so healthy, truthfully.

So don't give up hope and good luck catching echo catching
echo catching echo.
 
Even though I've never really lost a pet, one of my cats did go missing for a few minutes until I found it in my backyard. Hope you find Echo soon, he looks like a really nice pet :(.
 
I FOUND HIM!!!! :D:D:D:D I am so freaking happy right now! I guess I overreacted but I genuinely thought he was a goner. He was hiding in a planter box by the front door. I guess I had literally looked everywhere else except there. I just saw a YouTube video where someone said they found their lost snake in a flower pot so I thought to myself what if...? And sure enough, there he was! I'm on cloud nine right now. Thanks to you all for the support and encouragement!
 
Glad to hear you found your snake and he seems to be in good health.

I assume you have also done your research on which measures to take to prevent future escapes?
 
KevinB said:
Glad to hear you found your snake and he seems to be in good health.

I assume you have also done your research on which measures to take to prevent future escapes?
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Definitely. I've spent the last several nights Googling and YouTubing how to keep corn snakes contained to prepare myself for if I ever found him again. For started I duct taped his lid shut. It'll be a pain to open but since I only have to do that once a week, it shouldn't be a big deal. Also, when I wake up and before I go to bed every single day and night, I intend on checking to see if he's in there unlike how I use to only check periodically.
 
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Y'all have too much luck with pets. I lost my shrimp, Tôm back in September as described in the Hello Fishkeepers thread and I never found him. There's no way he's alive.
 
Hipporex said:
I FOUND HIM!!!! :D:D:D:D I am so freaking happy right now! I guess I overreacted but I genuinely thought he was a goner. He was hiding in a planter box by the front door. I guess I had literally looked everywhere else except there. I just saw a YouTube video where someone said they found their lost snake in a flower pot so I thought to myself what if...? And sure enough, there he was! I'm on cloud nine right now. Thanks to you all for the support and encouragement!
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That’s great news,:) my Monty escaped and I didn’t find him and Archie died a few weeks back:(
 
ZooBinh said:
Y'all have too much luck with pets. I lost my shrimp, Tôm back in September as described in the Hello Fishkeepers thread and I never found him. There's no way he's alive.
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Jake said:
That’s great news,:) my Monty escaped and I didn’t find him and Archie died a few weeks back:(
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@ZooBinh i have lost a lot of fish and yabbies over the years and last week I bought a Siamese fighting fish and it got eaten in like 20 minutes by my yabbie and my new pet budgie escaped 6 days in a row by getting through the bars of the cage ( don’t worry, we got a new cage for her;)
 
Congrats on the recapture! I've had several beasties escape, most have resulted in successful recoveries, luckily.

I've had a few of my different snakes escape over the years. All were reclaimed rather quickly, except for my false water cobra. The damn thing managed to get out, and it was small (maybe two feet long). It disappeared into the house and I was never able to find him. I'm assuming he either got outside somehow or died of starvation.

I've also had several bird escapes, all but one of which have turned out well. I've had ducks and coots go flying into neighbors yards that were reclaimed quickly. Once when I was feeding my turacos, one of them managed to slip out and make a break for it. Damn near **** my pants when she went flying past me. Luckily, she was hungry and fairly calm, so I ended up managing to grab her after she made a quick flight around the yard and landed on our neighbors AC unit. The only not so nice escape I had was my little lovebird, Spud, back when I was in highschool. It was the middle of winter and my grandfather was visiting, he decided to leave before my mother could put the bird back, and he flew out the door. I come home from school to my mom and sister driving around the area crying their eyes out, I thought something had happened to my grandfather, but it turns out Spud had escaped and they were out looking for him. It was a sad event, and we never did find him. Given it was the middle of winter, I have my doubts he managed to last the night, but you never know. He might have flown down to someone and they just kept him, as he was a rather friendly fellow.
 
Glad that you found the snake.

I never lost a pet, but my turtle has gotten out of his tank several times, and usually only got a short distance across the room before we caught him. Another time (this wasn't an escape situation, but initially we thought it was) when I was in elementary school, I captured some crickets in a jar to keep at home. In the following days, they started to disappear, and my dad thought they were escaping, until we realized they were cannibalizing each other!
 
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