Emory’s cloudy eyes indicate she is preparing to shed her skin.
When Emory, the Great Plains Rat Snake, had cloudy eyes last week, I set up a sort of spa to help with her upcoming shed. She had trouble shedding her skin last time and I suspect humidity was to blame. In dry conditions, the skin cracks and breaks off in many little pieces. It can even be more difficult to peel off and some skin might get stuck on. This can be a problem especially for the clear scale covering the eyes. If the eye caps stay on, layers build up during each shed and will eventually damage the eye.
To avoid these problems I installed a simple “fogger” in Emory’s enclosure. An ultrasonic fog generator (visible as the red glow in the photo) sits in a bowl of water and produces a fine mist. Just a 20-minute session with the fogger is enough to raise the humidity from 35% to 50%. With this daily burst of humid air, Emory was able to shed her skin overnight all in one piece.
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