We have a 1600 gram normal BP female and she has just went nuts recently. She strikes at you the minute you open the cage. She had been off feed for about 2 to 3 weeks and then she ate a 130 gram rat. My wife performs cleans her cage once or twice over the next 5 days and takes her out and weighs her on day 4. She goes to feed her on day 5 and she strikes at my wife while she opens the cage. My wife puts the rat in and she has it coiled in like 5 seconds. Today 2 days later my wife pulls her out and she strikes at me! We figure she is hungry, so we put another rat in with her. She strikes at the rat like 3 times in quick succesion, but only manages to throw the rat to the front of the tub. We try leaving the rat in and monitoring it, but the rat is having none of this and pulls up the front corner of the paper to make a wall between it and the snake. After trying to get the rat to go back for 15 minutes or so and say Hi we decide to remove the rat. We get the rat out, but it made a mess of the cage so my wife pulls her out and I clean her cage. My wife puts her back in and closes the tub. A couple minutes later my wife walks in front of the tub and she strikes at the front of the tub. I walk in front of the rack and she does the same a couple minutes later. We put a cover over the front of her tub as we don't want her to hurt herself by striking at anything that walks in front of the tub.

Is this a normal "I'm hungry" behavior?

Do big girls go through a phase in the overall breeding cycle that makes them extremely aggressive? (We were not going to start anything with her until next month as far as breeding becouse that is when quarantine is over.)

Anyone else have any ideas of why she would start to do this? Tub temps have remained the same 90 hot side 80 cool. Humidity has fluctuated between 50% and 60%, I think once it may have dropped to 45% for 6-12 hours, but that was a while ago.

Thanks in advance!