We (my boyfriend and I) tried feeding Sansa (our first reptile, she arrived on Wednesday morning) last night. This was probably a bad idea as we had JUST relocated her to his new living situation. She has been fed live with her breeder, so we got a live mouse for her. It looked about the right size, about the same as she is wide at her widest point.

She struck at it twice and missed, and then lost interest. We tried dangling it by its tail near her, but it just tried to attack her, which was sort of scary! (She is fine, don't worry) But we should have known better. My boyfriend stunned it, we tried dangling it again but at this point I think she was too stressed and totally disinterested. He felt bad after stunning it so he just killed it, which was very stressful for him.

After that, she struck it at once more and MISSED A THIRD TIME. We tried a little more but eventually wrapped the poor guy up and put him in the fridge to try again tonight. Total list of what NOT to do when feeding. All this took about 30 minutes.

Any advice for getting her to eat tonight? I'm a little concerned that she missed that many times. I hope she is healthy? Also, she yawned several times while being offered the mouse, does that mean she's interested in eating?

Today she seems to be doing well. Hanging out in her hide on the cool side of the tank, and very curious when I took her out for a few minutes earlier. She did hiss at me when I first picked her up, and it was so quiet! If there had been the slightest noise in the room I wouldn't have heard the hiss. She got quite comfortable after sitting on my lap for a minute though, and was scooting around like crazy! I put her back when I got tired of picking her up and bringing her back over to me.

Anyway, this whole thing has been a real confidence rattler. I thought we did enough research to know what we were doing, but we are TOTAL newbs. Help?