Cleaning After Rodent Intruders

[Cubie]

Hello! I'm new here and haven't introduced myself yet, but I have a juvenile common garter snake (named Tiberius) that I've had since early summer, and I have a question. I have him in a 10 gal terrarium.

For Christmas, I relocated him to a smaller plastic enclosure so I could take him home (as I'm staying in an apartment for university.) I left his terrarium as it was when I left.

However, after a few days, my roommate bought a mouse (I'm not entirely sure why!) She didn't have a cage for it, so she dropped it in Tibby's terrarium. I came back a week and a half later to find the little bugger still there, his feces strewn around the tank and the substrate (paper towel) chewed up and made into a little nest.

I'm not terribly pleased. : P

What do I need to do to clean up after the little intruder so it's safe for Tibby again? I'm not sure if a mouse would deposit parasites or anything into the tank that I'll need to remove. Besides the tank, I also need to clean rocks and driftwood. Can I just clean these, or should I boil the wood again to make sure it's clean? I'm not really sure what I need to do, since I haven't heard of this happening before, haha. ^^;

Any ideas for a garter newbie?

[Stefan-A]

A thorough cleaning should be enough.

[guidofatherof5]

Nice to have you on the forum.

A good cleaning with a 1 part clorox 10 parts water mix should be good. Scrub the wood down with a soapy water mix and bake it in the oven at 200 for about 30 minutes or just let it air dry. It sounds like you have time on your side so air drying the wood would be safest.
I use a pre-mix, called Clorox Clean-up. It's always ready to go. Whatever I cleaned with the clorox gets a good cleaning with water afterwords and a long air dry or a quick dry in front of a fan.

[ssssnakeluvr]

like Stefan said, a thorough cleaning will be good enough. mice are captive bred by the millions....they generally don't have any parasites.

[ConcinusMan]

No problem. It's not like the mouse feces are poison. I would wipe it down with a VERY WEAK bleach solution though, just to be safe and make sure it's thoroughly dry before putting anything living in there.

[Odie]

Hi, from Oregon, Cubie :)

[drache]

welcome to the forum, Cubie

[Cubie]

Thank you all for the advice. =) I cleaned the tank and made my roommate scrub the rocks. ;D

Tiberius is back in his tank and very pleased to have a constant heat source again.

(And the mouse is in a cage and not in my room. I never really realized how pleasant-smelling garter snakes were until I had mouse-smell in my room. Phew!)

Since I am a new snake owner, I'll probably have questions in the future, so I'll try to stick around and make myself active. ^^ Thanks for the warm welcome!

[guidofatherof5]

Thank you all for the advice. =) I cleaned the tank and made my roommate scrub the rocks. ;D
Tiberius is back in his tank and very pleased to have a constant heat source again.
(And the mouse is in a cage and not in my room. I never really realized how pleasant-smelling garter snakes were until I had mouse-smell in my room. Phew!)
Since I am a new snake owner, I'll probably have questions in the future, so I'll try to stick around and make myself active. ^^ Thanks for the warm welcome!

Nice to here he's back home. We would love to see a photo.

[Cubie]

I haven't taken a picture of Tiberius lately, but let me see if I can dig around and find one...

Here we go! It's hard to tell what size he is from this, but he's still teeny tiny. And he's just a common garter snake, so he's nothing flashy, but he's my baby. =)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/cubie_j/6770_265855195222_861980222_8463144.jpg

[ConcinusMan]

Yeah, photo's please! You've introduced yourself but it's the snake we're really interested in meeting. ;)

[drache]

he's pretty

[ConcinusMan]

Well guys, I'm still no ID expert but does that look like an eastern sirtalis to you? And yes, he's nothing flashy, but handsome anyway.

[Stefan-A]

Well guys, I'm still no ID expert but does that look like an eastern sirtalis to you?
I agree with that ID.