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Having a house that smells like your pet can be frustrating at best. You can find several online articles about removing cat and dog odors from your home, but what about reptiles like snakes? Do they leave an odor in your home? While snakes are not traditionally stinky animals, no animal is odorless.
Here are six tips and tricks to banish the snake smell from your home for good! This article also covers what makes a snake “smell,” so you will understand why there is a foul odor in the first place.
Where Does Snake Smell Come From?
Most animals have a natural odor, but it can be hard to tell where the smell comes from. While the most obvious answer is to use your nose, some organic substances in your snake’s enclosure are probably causing the foul odor; clearing them out will reduce the smell in your house.
Carcasses
Snakes generally eat live food and excrete carcasses. Depending on where your snake eliminates, you might not even realize their enclosure is home to a corpse before it stinks. If your snake’s enclosure is starting to stink to the high heavens, look for an errant carcass. Removing all the carcasses from your snake’s enclosure should clear up most of the smell almost instantly.
Droppings
Snake droppings aren’t as pungent as those of other pets, but the odor becomes stronger if the enclosure isn’t cleaned regularly. Clean out the snake’s enclosure and see if it clears up the smell.
Musk
Both genders of snakes are equipped with cloacal glands that emit foul-smelling substances when the snake feels threatened. This musky odor is meant to ward off the snake’s predators and can even be released when the snake is hibernating to discourage an opportunistic predator from invading the nest.
As a result, snake nests and enclosures might smell exceptionally bad if the snake isn’t comfortable in its new home yet. Additionally, if you have other animals, like cats or dogs that might spook your snake, you may find this odor around your snake’s enclosure.
Nests
Snakes spend a lot of time in their nests, which can start to smell like your snake. Additionally, your snake may be secreting musk into its nest, even during hibernation, which can increase the smelliness of their nests.
Clearing away snake nests and letting your snake rebuild their home can drastically reduce the odors associated with snakes.
Cleaning Tips to Reduce Snake Odors
As you might have guessed, the key to reducing snake odors is to clean the enclosure more often and thoroughly. Ensure that you’re only using natural cleaning solutions in the enclosure.
The 4 Steps to Get Rid of Snake Odor
1. Start By Assessing the Source of the Smell
You’re ready to tackle the cleaning job once you’ve figured out where all the smells are coming from. If you can’t identify a specific smell, clean the enclosure from top to bottom.
Emptying the enclosure will reveal anything that your snake has stashed away (on purpose or by accident) and give you a better idea of what’s causing the smells to fill your house.
2. Sweep Up Droppings
You can use a dustpan to sweep up the area your snake lives in to get the droppings out of the area. Fresh snake poop looks like small, dark brown chunks. Of course, the size will be relative to the snake, but they shouldn’t be massive. However, as the poop ages, it will turn a chalky white. So don’t ignore white pellets, either!
Dispose of your snake’s droppings in an outdoor garbage bin to remove the smell permanently from your home.
3. Scrub Your Snake’s Enclosure
The best thing you can use is just plain hot water, but if your snake enclosure has started to smell strange, you’ll probably need a cleaning solution and some elbow grease. Use an animal-safe dish detergent like Dawn to create a mild mixture that you can use to scrub the inside of your snake’s tank.
Once you’ve finished scrubbing, you should let it dry completely before filling it back up.
4. Use a Natural Air Freshener
If the smell persists, consider employing a natural air freshener that will help mask the scent of your snake while it dissipates after cleaning. You can boil cinnamon sticks and orange peels in a cup of water.
Once the mixture boils, transfer it to a cup and place it near the source of the smell—your snake’s enclosure, in this case—and leave it there to mask the scent in the area. If you’re keeping up with your cleaning, the smell should dissipate on its own.
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Conclusion
An animal’s smell can be frustrating to deal with when you can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Luckily, captive snakes live in enclosures, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to determine where your snake’s smell originates.
Once you’ve identified the smell, it’s simple to eliminate and typically involves thoroughly cleaning the enclosure.
Featured Image Credit: Maria Babikova, Shutterstock
