Feeding accident

[Ralph Van Hee]

Hello all,

I'll cut right to it.

I've got this breeding female who is always as food aggressive as can be. I don't mind getting bit but I open her rack with a hook since she genuinely just flies out as soon as the rack opens enough for her to fit through if she even remotely smells rat in the room.

An hour or so ago, when I was about to feed her and had opened the rack, she attempted to strike at the water dripping off the rat when it was still suspended above her. Needless to say, she missed.

Or at least missed the rat. She slammed herself straight into her ceramic water bowl, full force, head first. She then squirmed around, spinning on her back, as if she was dying. Scared the living hell out of me. She stopped squirming after some seconds, had her head suspended, jaw half open and was audibly breathing rapid short breaths.

After 5 minutes or so of being perfectly still like that with me watching her, worried as can be, she opened her mouth to reset her jaw and seemingly started slowly looking around for food again like the pig she is. She still looked very confused and slow. I actually offered the rat again just to see if she would take it and to my surprise she did, albeit not in her usual violent manner. At least that helped to calm my nerves and show that she is, hopefully, alright and will recover fine.

Just felt that I should share this with at least someone, she damn near gave me a heart attack.

Has anyone had something similar to this happen? Should I still be worried? In the future I plan to remove her water bowl before I start thawing any rats, just in case. Can't imagine anything else I can do about it.