Posting this to a few different places...basically just a short, pointless tale of how paranoid I am about the safety of my animals. XD

So I just moved my Ball, Macchiato, up to the next size in feeder...and I also switched the brand of frozen feeder I use (I've now had THREE bad mice crop up from the last brand, and I'll be hanged if the last bad mouse wasn't actively ROTTING when they froze it. It had actually begun to DECAY.). So tonight, I thawed out the first "new" feeder.

It looked good, nice and healthy looking...the thing was about as wide around as Macchiato's biggest coil, so I felt pretty confident...but it was also a lot longer than the ones he's been eating. Not so much a wider prey item, but longer.

He got all excited at the scent of prey, and once he managed to grab it (he tends to strike and miss once or twice if it isn't actively bonking him on the nose. Thankfully what he lacks in AIM, he makes up for in eagerness to feed. I can't complain.) he only constricted it for about a minute before looking for the head to swallow it.

He mistook the forelimb for the head...and basically tried to eat it sideways.

Twice.

For a bit there he was considering eating it backwards...thankfully that didn't last long.

FINALLY he found the head and began to swallow it...I get a little anxious watching him eat because while I know he is designed by nature itself to do this, it still worries me that he'll...I dunno...split open from being stretched out too much.

He got to the shoulders, and as he was working past them...I heard this terrible little "RIP" sound from his jaws.

OMG, cue my ABSOLUTE PANICK. I thought he was tearing his jaw from stretching too wide. I had this feeling that I'd somehow killed the most wonderful snake in the world. Terror, man, TERROR!!!

Macchiato kept calmly eating his snack, and as he walked his jaws on down, I saw what had made the noise. I've had some humidity issues and Macchiato recently had a stuck shed (actually, ALL my snakes have gotten stuck the last time, I've since switched their substrate and have a humidifier in the room). I thought I'd gotten all the stuck nasty old dead skin off...turns out I missed a tiny patch right under his chin, and the stretch to get past the shoulders dislodged it.

Macchiato now has the teeniest bulge in the middle and instead of going back into hunt-mode, he's curled up and looks supremely satisfied. XD

However, for me it was the Scariest Feeding Ever. I was totally convinced he was gonna die. XD Intellectually I know better...that's the right sized prey item for the little fellow, after all, and it makes sense it'll take more effort to eat something so much bigger than the wee skinny little things he was on. But that doesn't stop me from worrying!

That little "RIP" sound is now burned into my mind, lol!