Intense feeding session (and interesting behaviour)

[Memnoch03]

[might be a tiny bit graphic]

I'm sure it's happened to all of us at one point, but wow, today's feed was gross! Also, Dahlia has continued to show to me a trend in her eating which I find kind of interesting... I wonder if it happens with anyone else?

Anyway, Dahlia is a fairly youngin' still, about 26 inches, don't know her weight (but she's well proportioned and growing quickly) She takes 2 adult mice a week. I just finished her session, and she - as always - showed off her amazing feeding response. I don't have to simulate life in any way in her mice (she's been eating F/T for almost her whole life), and i dangled in mouse 1, she sniffed about at it for about 3 seconds, went halfway down to the other end of the tub, then turned around and hurled herself at it. Her strikes are so impressive! she wrapped a full 3 coil constrict and i heard this squish noise, and to my surprise saw pretty much all the internal organs got squished out of this mouse's stomach, right out the middle! Then began an interesting situation, she had a realy hard time finding the head because this mouse was basically shaped like a T now. head on one end, tail on the other, and innards coming out perpendicular in the middle. She tried for a bit, let go, looked around and it and circled it, then she seemed to think it's back was the head, and tried to eat it that way (almost bending it in half in the process) for a few minutes. I began to wonder if i should remove it and just give her a new one, but she ferociously chomped away, pretty much just chewing the midsection for about 5 minutes, then let go again.. after almost 20 minutes of this she found the head and got the thing down.

Yuck - but an amazing display of power and tenacity nonetheless.

So, on to mouse 2. She did what she does every time she gets a second victim presented. i can just dangle it there by the tail, and she'll pretty much slither up underneath it, open up that massive jaw, and start engulfing it vertically with no strike or constriction at all. Keep in mind, im not following the first mouse with the second one while her mouth is still open or anything, i let her fully finish, stop, yawn, and relax for about 5 minutes. She does this every feeding. Always strikes at the first one, and always just calmly starts swallowing the second one direct from the hemostats. Has anyone else seen this behaviour in their snakes?

Anyhow - I was sure scrambling for the camera today, she made a mess of herself, yet the batteries were dead. Oh well.

They never cease to shock, no matter how many times you've seen 'em!