Mister Underhill (Or Mister Undermat, as it were)

Ramón is a terrestrial snake. Though he does seem to appreciate his vivarium branches, more often than not he'll be on the ground if he doesn't want to be disturbed. Usually right in the back corner behind the larger bamboo hide (not in it, squeezed in behind  it).

Popping out from behind aforementioned hide

So it doesn't particularly worry me if I can't see him if I pop over to check on him. Right now he'll be either behind the bamboo hide, or in his other rock one (they're both on the warm side).

Sliding in

Then there were 3 consecutive days where he was just.. not around. Two days I could understand, but three started to worry me. I grabbed the torch and had a peep into his hides, expecting him to be hiding in his rock.. but all I could see was substrate.

I checked behind the bamboo hide. No, not there either. Maybe he's on the cool end. Not in the Batcave. Not under the bridge. My heart starts fluttering.

I'm trying to stay calm. There's no way he could have gotten out. He must just be hiding under the substrate somewhere. I poke around, hoping to disturb him wherever he may be.

Still nothing. I'm freaking out. How the hell did he get out? Where would he be now? Maybe he crawled into the spare substrate under the viv? I carefully start pulling out substrate from the vivarium, though my heart is starting to break a little.

Eventually I've taken all the substrate out and he's not there. I'm devastated. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw him. And then I look at the wooden mat that we taped down over the heat cord and I think, "He used to have this habit of crawling under paper towel in his click clack [plastic enclosure we got him in]... oh wait on, no fucking way."

This is how we had initally proposed to stop Ramón from getting under the mat in the first place:

Lots of masking tape.

I ripped up the tape - lo and behold, there he was, snuggled right up to the heat cord. He had circumvented the tape by digging through the substrate that we had tightly packed around the base of the leftmost tree branch ["He won't get through that."]. Little bastard.

Needless to say I was extremely relieved. It took a little coaxing to get him out from under there - I put him back into his old click clack and  took the opportunity to clean down the vivarium. I also taped the mat down again - this time, including around the branch.

Ain't no snake getting under this time.

I wasn't going to take any chances.

Since my retaping he hasn't disappeared again. If, by some power, he ends up under there again - and dies from dehydration or whatever - I'm probably going to be really upset, but frankly, the Darwin files deserve that one.