Sleep and Kill

[Evilme5229]

Today is feeding day for my bps. Unlike several times before, today was a very rare and interesting event.

My newest bp Sprite has been a little shy to say the least when it comes to eating. After several failed attempts in trying to have her eat not inside her enclosure, I decided I would do what I hate and see if feeding in her enclosure would work. I hate feeding in the enclosure because the pine shavings almost always stick to the prey and your snake is digesting the shavings. Thats all I need.

So I took out the water bowl and the hide box and plopped the rat inside the cage. After 30 mins I was about to just take the rat out of enclosure and throw up my hands. Somehow I decided to wait a little longer. After about 45 mins I noticed that the rat stuck itself in the corner of the tub. I thought that maybe this rat died of shock or something, because it wasn't moving for crap. His eyes were half open half closed and it looked like it was barely breathing. Sprite was exploring her enclosure acting like she was not interested. I noticed adventually she was rubbing up against the rat almost like she was petting it. Shocked, annoyed, and preparing to setup my new fuzzy rodent his home. I watched as my snake kept bumping it. Than I saw her open her mouth in attempt to eat the rat ALIVE without strangling it.

The rat still didn't move. Finally the rat must have woke up and realized that his snake friend was not a friend at all and started to struggle. Sprite quickly wrapped her body around to choke her friend.

I find it amazing that a rat would let a snake put its mouth around its head before it realizes that its not something normal. To think that Sprite wouldn't strangle her food before eating it. I don't know if she thought it was already dead or what, but it sure was a rare sight to see.

Crazy Sprite and crazy dumb rat!

[Elise.m]

Wow, that is crazy! I don't even know how I would react to that situation... I'd probly have to pinch myself several times to make sure I wasn't seeing things!

[mr. s]

Sounds like a fantastic time to switch Sprite to frozen thawed prey.

[het.pied]

thinking the same thing!^^

[CeeJay]

Two of my snakes eat FT rats without constricting. I place them in the opposite end of the tank and within a half hour, the rats are gone. I would definitely switch to FT or PK. A live rat can do some damage.

[Evilme5229]

I don't do f/t or prekill. I know that she eats live rats. If it happens again than I would consider it, but I think this was a fluke. Its not typical behavior and my distributor fed her live rats. I just think it was a weird behavoir outta her.

[Kaorte]

Well you had several failed attempts at feeding her live before, but she gladly started eating what she thought was a dead mouse...so why not just save the trouble and possibly the danger of this happening again by giving her a pre-killed or f/t?

I have quite a few snakes who are very shy feeders and will NOT eat if I dangle the f/t rodent, but only if it is laying in their tub.

[derrabe]

I was surprised no one else caught the fact he said he is using pine shavings...isnt that a huge no no and can be toxic to the snake? Maybe I misread it though is the snake in pine shaving or just the housing for the mouse/rat

I had a snake constrict once that me never struck he just had the mouse crawl into his coil and he tightened up then ate the mouse after it was dead.

[Kaorte]

Pine shavings are pretty debated. Some people say that kiln dried pine is fine but I will personally never use it because it contains the same phenols that make cedar toxic.

[Evilme5229]

I find it funny that I post something interesting and get a lot of conjecture about changing her to feeding her f/t and prekilled rats. lol.

I've only had her for about 2 weeks. Failed attempts have been 2 or 3. Nothing crazy or serious. F/t and prekill are to involved for me not to mention unnatural. All my other snakes eat live. Ppl get worried about a snake getting injured by a rat, but there are so many ways that prekilled and f/t can go wrong too. I could understand if this was the hundreth time my snake did not want to eat, but this is literally the third. My preference is live, if she doesn't take to live, than I have no choice to use but prekill/ft. I'm not to the point yet where I'm going to start switchin her to f/t or prekill.

I wrote the post only to mark the event.