poor little guy!

so... i put a little mouse in my new spiders tub, and turned the lights off and left him for about 5 mins... i went back in to check on him with just the light from my phone, and wheni walked in there the mouse ran in fron of him and he struck at it and missed, and instead got a mouth full of aspen bedding :( i waited like 30 seconds to see if he could get it out himself and he got most of it out, but then he started squarming aroud so i quickly got him out and tried to get the big piece that was still in his mouth out by gently pulling on it... then i was like DUH! and pulled backwards on it and it came right out... i just feel bad for him :( its only his 5th meal of his life (second meal with me) and he got a mouth full of crap instead of the mouse. i just hope he'll still eat it, cause he was pretty freaked out when i put him back. he's just so tiny and i want to make sure he eats good cause i'm paranoid. everyone says there is no reason to feed out of there tub, and i always dissagreed for THIS reason... i thought i'd give it a try and see how they did and now this happened. if i wasnt there to see what happened he could have had it stuck for an hour or two before i noticed. i'm afraid to feed him in his tub now...

sorry it was so long and typed so badly, lol.

I used to place a piece of cardboard down on the side with the mouse. Or use tongs I did not have a problem in the cage. I would feel more uncomfortable about leaving the rodent in there if it was not P/K.

thats why i checked on him so soon. i dont leave them in there longer than a half hour if they dont eat it.

I had mine get aspen in his mouth before so I just lay a paper towel down over the aspen and hang the mouse over the towel. Mine has been a good eater so far so I only have to hold the mouse for about a minute before he takes him.

Honestly - he would have been fine and likely would have worked it out on his own. They ingest leaves, twigs etc when they eat in the wild, and they are perfectly designed to be able to handle all of this.

I keep all mine on paper now, but when I did keep mine on aspen, I always fed in the enclosure and never laid anything down over the apsen on feeding day.

Did some of mine ingest aspen? Yup! Did any of them have anything bad happen as a result of ingesting aspen? Nope!

I know that when you are new to keeping these animals, it's easy to be over-protective and over worried about our animals - but honestly, he probably would have worked it out, caught the mouse and eaten it if you hadn't returned so quickly. :)

I have a few shy eaters that need to have the p/k or f/t prey inside their hide in order to feed. On a few occasions the hide has been the humid one so there is some damp moss in there. I'm sure they have ingested a bit of it every once in while.

The Barker's note that their BP's have ingested a lot of aspen over the years with no ill effects. So no worries.

I had a female hit the metal tongs once, and I was worried she may have hurt her mouth. But she was fine and eating later that day.

I bet your little guy doesn't even remember it at this point.

JonV