Notorious Live Eater took F/T!!!

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I bought an adult Spider ball python back in October 2017, retired breeding male from a guy who said he takes both live and F/T. I didn't actually find out which he had eaten most recently (didn't know better) and took the guy's word for it. By what I have to assume is coincidence, the receipt I got from the breeder didn't have any info on it except about the snake. And by the time it was important, I couldn't remember who I had bought him from. So, I had no contact info for the guy. Oops...

Now, I didn't really know much about the winter fasting, so the first 2 attempts to feed, I did F/T small rats (which was the size I was told by the guy, I did get that part right!). Both were completely ignored, as if he had no idea they were even food. Left one outside his hide per one of the suggestions from here, and cracked the door even later at night to find him hanging his head out of the hide and laying right on it 2 hours later. Complete. Fail.

By this point, I was getting a bit concerned. Since it was still the "no handling" period, I didn't have a weight for him yet, but it looked like he had lost weight visually. So, I set out to get him a live rat. Lo and behold, there is only ONE place I can get live feeders outside of an expo. (The closest rodent breeder who usually vends those is only open weekdays for pickup and my work schedule left me no way to get there during those times...) I went there, and just my luck at that point, there were NO rats. They did have 1 jumbo rat, they said, but that's absolutely FAR too big for a male BP to take live safely (he was probably weighting 1,250-1,300 grams; he fluctuates between 1,250 and 1,400 these days depending on poop of course). So, I did the only thing I thought would at least get him something to eat. I bought a pair of adult mice. Shockingly, after nearly an hour of complete failure at hunting, he did manage to eat both mice. He's evidently got the wobble pretty strong, and it did not improve his hunting at all...

From there, he took 1 small rat (probably closer to medium looking at charts, it was probably 90-100 grams...), I skipped the next week since he was in blue, and then began a string of random refusals of both mice (in case he decided he liked them better than rats) and rats of varying colors. We had a "pet" rat for about a month at one point since he kept refusing. By the time he resumed eating more than every 3-4 offerings (spaced 1 or 2 weeks apart), it was mid-March and he had take a total of 6 meals for me.. 3 pairs of mice and 3 rats. Since then, except for 1 offering where I hadn't taken him out in about 2 days before feeding and he had gone blue, he has taken everything live (pretty much all rats) offered.

However, live is fairly expensive and inconvenient to go get each week, and despite watching and keeping the mouth end of the rats busy when he inevitably grabs the belly until it dies, he managed to get a tiny cut right near one eye (bite presumably? though the only feeding it could have happened from was one where I used the tongs to give the rat something to bite until it had stopped moving entirely, so no idea how at this point...). I didn't even see if until after his 48 hours digesting and it was just a small line of a scab maybe 1/8" long.. nothing bad has come of it and it's pretty much invisible now, will be 100% gone when he next sheds.

But it's enough to concern me, and since he seems to have gained back the weight he lost over his winter fast, I figured it was a good time to try and force the issue with F/T. I did try once or twice during his fasting when he took a meal previously (and once with 1 live mouse followed by 1 F/T... took live, not F/T.. ). I've tried all of the tricks I'd heard of for heating properly (hot water + wet, hot water + dry in a bag, hair dryer and re-heating, thawing in the room, fan blowing warm air across the rat into the cage to get him excited combined with hair dryer + zombie walk.... EVERYTHING like that.)

So, last weekend was attempt #1. He seems to start losing weight fairly quickly, so my plan was 3 weeks attempting F/T, 1 week with a live weaned rat (smaller than his usual to keep him a bit hungrier maybe), then repeat. He's got a whole T8, so before the live if he went 3 fails with F/T, I was going to swap him into either half of the T8 or shuffle some things and put him into a TGR bin/single rack (40, I believe.. 13.5"x33" or something like it). See if maybe more secure area would help out.

But before that, I thought I would try something that some folks have mentioned success with, but can bring some controversy. Gerbils.
Now, I know that feeding gerbils is generally a bad plan, so I didn't want that. But after some reading and that they're frequently part of the wild diet, I figured this wouldn't hurt much.

What you have to know, is that my husband has a pair of gerbils. So, I happen to have handy "dirty" gerbil bedding at all times. I figured I would give scenting the F/T rat a try with some of the gerbils bedding. If it worked, no big deal to just do that each week. And I know we won't have any issues "replacing" the gerbils as they get old and die for the life of the BP if he never opted to eat unscented.

So, that was today's plan. He didn't seem to show much more interest in the rat than he has been for F/T before. He pokes out of his hide, "S"s up, watches it closely at it "walks", flicks tongue interestedly, etc. He just usually will. not. strike.
This time, though. On my second reheat (where I heated it for probably 3-4 minutes on low with the hairdryer, whole body since he tends to go for the belly rather than the head), he actually struck! And missed.
Scared me half to death, because I was almost certain he wouldn't strike and because he missed above the rat, up the tongs, fairly close to my hand... oops.

Eventually, 2 or 3 re-heats later, he struck again and grabbed it! I very quietly shut the glass doors, and left the room. I had turned the lights out early to simulate night for him since he was showing enough interest out of the hide when I checked the rat for thawed-ness. Gave him 5-10 minutes and looked back in to see him and the rat gone. Or so I thought. He had actually just dragged it into the hide! I debated leaving it longer since he's typically a slow eater, but decided to try and shine a light into the hide to see if he was laying on it, or eating. And he was EATING!

TL;DR: Live-only and inconsistent eater BP bought at the start of a winter fast has FINALLY taken a F/T rat.

I'll hop on mobile to post the pics I took to make up for that massive wall of text.