Please help....my snake is STOOP ;)

I've been caring for ball pythons for a few years now and have never come across this before. I picked up a beautiful 120gram pied female at Tinley and put her into her new enclosure as soon as I arrived home. I waited 5 days before trying to feed her a live mouse and she nailed it almost immediately and swallowed it down. Every 4 days or so since then I have been giving her another mouse. The thing is, she hasn't actually EATEN any of these mice. She will strike at and hit them 3-10 times before I remove the mouse but she can't seem to grab a hold of them and coil them up. Today I tried to feed her a f/t mouse and she even struck at that 3 times but was still unable to grab onto it. I've laid a freshly killed mouse on top of her body, under her hide at night....but still she doesn't eat it. This has worked for me in the past with picky babies.

This is a peculiar situation for me because she doesn't refuse to eat, but rather she seems incapable of it.

Has anybody else ever dealt with this before? If you have or have not, I welcome your suggestions.

Thanks,
Kyle

When a snake strikes without coiling it's from stress.
She's telling you get that thing out of her face...

That may very well be the case. I will leave her alone for for the next week and hopefully that solves the problem.

On a side note, she has TRIED to coil the mice multiple times but the mouse will end up getting out. I've never seen that before either. Also she did eat live for me 5 days after all of the stress involved with getting her from Tinley and set up in a new home which is why I somewhat dismissed stress.

However, what you say makes sense and is logical. Thank you for the input. I will give her space.

We had a Lesser do that a few years ago. I gave her a week or two to chill out and destress. Also, the first time I did get her to eat, I used a prekilled mouse and held it near her with tongs and made her work to get it. She really went after it. After that, she has been hitting like a champ first time every time!

My Dumeril's boa (also a finnicky breed) did that for a couple months. I have now given her a few weeks and am going to try a smaller prey item to see if I can get her going again. A rat pup or pink is another option you could try in a week or two, depending in her size.

Sounds like a defensive strike, not a feed strike to me. Give her some space.

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She didn't get up to 120 grams without eating. That's 4 or 5 meals, at least.

I actually find striking is a good sign. A lot of my babies will strike the week before they start eating. Some of them will even kill the mouse and then leave it. And I've seen them coil and let go when the mouse started squeaking, too. Generally it means they'll eat just fine in another week.

She might be going into shed? Anyway, I'd give her another week off and try again.

I would try a rat pup instead, in a good 5-7 days. I would not even look in the bin before you open it to throw in the rat pup. Still and quiet. Since it can not hurt your snake you can throw it in and not look in the bin till the next morning. She may treat a different prey item differently and better to have them on rats early on anyhow.