I dropped my beautiful 300g male mojave (Conan) a mouse today and monitered the feeding as usual. Instead of striking the head, he struck the back end of the mouse and began constricting the lower half of its body. For about a minute, the mouse seemed to be taking short quick breaths, but never stopped moving. As Conan started to uncoil, (I'm sure assuming his prey was killed) the mouse started flailing and trying to get away, so he tightened up around the mouse again for another 30 seconds. This time after uncoiling, the mouse continued to try and escape but Conan just continued to uncoil. The back left leg of the mouse was in Conan's mouth, and the mouse was very much alive, and he started to swallow!!! He worked his way to about halfway down the mouse, all while the mouse is still trying to escape with the upper half of his body, and I started to get worried. I didn't know what to do because I didn't want to harm my snake. I didn't want to force him to regurgitate or cause him any serious stress, so I did what any desperate person in this situation would do and bashed the mouse on the head with the bottom of a cologne bottle and killed it! Conan continued to swallow the mouse and finished his meal successfully.

Has anyone ever had this happen to them before?! If it has, what did you do? Or what would you have done? I realize I am probably going to get some flack for this, but I did what I thought was necessary with what I had handy.