Hello all, first post here. SOS = Save Our Snake, duh duh chhhhhh. I couldn't decide whether to put this is the general or husbandry forum, sorry if i chose wrong. This may be a little long winded but I want to make sure I explain In detail.

I bought my first snake a month ago. She is a normal ball python named Lucy. She is a great snake and seemed healthy. I got her from a small reptile place, they have a few BPs, but mostly corns and lizards. Of course when I bought her the lady said she had been feeding fine. She is pretty small right now, which is why I bought her. The biggest part of her body is probably the size of a nickel or a quarter and when fully stretched out she is probably about 16 inches long. She is not very big at all. She seems to be way smaller than she should be for her length, especially being a female but then again her head is really small too. Can anybody give me an estimate of her age? I have had her for a month now, and she will not eat for me. I have tried everything. The lady said she had been eating live so that is what I tried first with a hopper mouse (white) after letting her settle in for a week. I made sure that it was very dark when I first tried to feed her and held the mouse by the tail with a very long pair of needle nose pliers i have, they are probably 14 or so inches, and I made sure she could not see my hand. I tried to feed her in a box with a hide that i had put the mouse in for a little while to scent it. Then I put her in there and let her adjust for like an hour. I tried my best to make everything perfect. She acted like she wasn't even the least bit interested. After about 20 mins I put the mouse up and put her back in her cage and left her be figuring she needed to adjust more for another week only opening the cage to change her water once a day. The next week I tried to feed her again, at one point she came out of the hide lifted her head up about 2 inches from the mouse bobbed and weaved a little for prolly 2 minutes and then turned and crawled away. 3 days later I decided to try and give her a fresh killed mouse. I put it on a rock in her cage and left it overnight. I dreamt she ate it but when I woke up it was still laying there unfortunately. I tried another live mouse that weekend, I drove to every pet store within 40 miles that im aware of and could not find any pinkies so I settled for another hopper. She didn't eat after a fresh kill in her cage again overnight. Last Saturday (4 days ago) I tried to feed her live again with a half gray and white hopper, No dice. I havent weighed her yet but I can see that she has lost weight since I have had her by her skin wrinkling a little. Being that young and small she has to hungry, despite everything I have read about BPs fasting and whatnot.

I have made every effort to provide perfect husbandry. I will include a pic of her cage as well as Lucy in my profile pics. She was in the same kind of cage when I bought her also. I have a glass tank with aspen sunstrate, 2 hides, nice big waterbowl for her and sticks to crawl. The ambient temp is 81-82 with a warm and cool side.The humidity stays around 50-60%, misting a few times every other day or so. Her heat source is a clamp style light with a black colored bulb. I figured I would get the black bulb so that she can get light from my room through the day and at night she will have darkness and still have warmth.Im up late most of the time, but I keep the light off of her cage to provide night/day light ratio.

Her behavior seems normal for what I have read. She will crawl around a little after dark and around daylight.SHe crawls through her hides, on the sticks and sometimes through her waterbowl. Sometimes at night I will be on the computer below her and she will come to the front of her cage and look down at me. She has no signs of respiratory infection that I can tell and looks healthy except for her weight. She has me stumped. She Is stressing me out bad because she will not eat. Being this small I figure she has to eat before too long or she will die. Can anyone provide me with some advice on what I can do? Like I said it is really stressing me out because I would feel horrible if she did die because of something I did wrong and I dont know if I could own another snake after that for fear of the same thing happening. I don't know. Can anyone offer me any advice or insight as to what I should do?

tl;dr = Small snake wont eat, good husbandry as far as I know, HELP!!!!