Old Passive Ball Turns Aggressive

[Reinz]

I have a 11 -12 yr old? Ball That I inherited from my daughter a few years ago. Now I love the guy! He has been very passive, never has struck at anyone. He eats Live rats. I say he, we just call it a he.

Aside from going on a 4-5 month hunger strike in the fall winter 2 years ago, he has been a regular eater. He is a 4 footer and eats a large rat every 2 weeks in a separate aquarium which is a fairly new routine since we got him a larger cage 4 months ago.


The large rat is fairly new as well, he was eating a medium one. He fed two days ago. Yesterday I went to get him out of his cage for playtime. I don't use a wuss stick. I wash my hands first, then approach his mid-section from behind and gently poke him, wait for him to puff up, then I lift him up. No prob. However yesterday, he whipped around and I saw he meant business. I pulled my hand out of the cage. He started machine gun striking like crazy.

An hour later, I went back. Just approaching the cage, he hit the glass hard! If I moved my hand around outside the glass, he followed in a strike pose.

Today he is in strike pose as well. I will see if I can post pics, being new here and all.


He shed 2 wks ago, so he is NOT up for shed. He should be FULL with a large rat. No other snakes in the house or pets in the room.


Temp not under the light is 80, humidity is about 60-65. I keep his water level half to full, depends if he's been dunking.


I'm totally perplexed! He's been so docile, now he's a Madman!


Any thoughts?

Thanks

[steve_r34]

could be a lot of things .. maybe hes hungry .. maybe the switching of the cages during feeding .. maybe he dont want to be bothered .. it could also be since he went to strike and u pulled out n never tried again he feels like he has the power now .. JMO .. good luck

[bcr229]

If he had a large rat two days ago he may need more time to digest it. Also you said he's been moved into a larger enclosure, does he have warm and cool side hides? What's the temperature on the warm side?

[Reinz]

Hey, thanks for the responses.

I decided that he was either in the mood to kill something or still hungry.

Man he hit that rat before it touched the ground.

I left the room to get the mail and change clothes. I came back to check on him, and he had slammed dunked that rat like it was a Nacho! He looked at me like "what's next?" .

Man I hope he's still not hungry. This will get expensive!

Thanks again!

[Pickenprod]

It could be the new feeding routine with the separate cage. Since you have been taking him out to feed him, perhaps he now thinks that handling leads to food?

[Diamond Serpents]

It could be the new feeding routine with the separate cage. Since you have been taking him out to feed him, perhaps he now thinks that handling leads to food?

This is probably correct, there is no need to feed in a separate enclosure. I see this all the time here with people feeding in separate enclosures/tubs. It causes stress on your snake, also if you ever expand up to a nice size collection it would take forever to feed.

You are more likely to get bit doing this then anything. If you're not afraid of him tagging you, just feed him in his actual enclosure.