How do you Zombie dance?

I have one (who will only eat mice) who's perfectly content to just have them dumped in there. My big girl however insists on fresh killed, non-white rats, presented with the tub pulled 1/3 of the way out, water bowl and hides removed, in zombie handstand pose, moved back and forth at a moderate pace parallel to the edge of the rack. Guess how long it took me to get THAT exactly right!

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Originally Posted by Badgemash

I have one (who will only eat mice) who's perfectly content to just have them dumped in there. My big girl however insists on fresh killed, non-white rats, presented with the tub pulled 1/3 of the way out, water bowl and hides removed, in zombie handstand pose, moved back and forth at a moderate pace parallel to the edge of the rack. Guess how long it took me to get THAT exactly right!

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Sounds like she's got you trained pretty well. :D:D:D

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Originally Posted by MarkS

Sounds like she's got you trained pretty well. :D:D:D

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She sure does, but she also gave me five healthy eggs, so I'm willing to indulge her whims. ;)

*sighs* apparently not the right way...tried that scruff thing tonight with a nice warm squishy previously frozen stiff small rat. He definitely wanted to eat it as he struck pretty quickly. Problem was it shocked the hell out of me and I ended up banging the tongs against the side of the tank.

Im used to feeding live. My girl ate tonight, one adult mouse dropped in tank ='s dead mouse in 2.2 seconds. This is def going to try me since my first instinct is to run my ass down the the pet store and buy a nice juicy live rat.

I need an intervention!!!

I voted other mostly because I do different things with different snakes. I got a group of ball pythons that were all off feed when I got them and some were pretty thin. I had to learn quickly how to present their food to them so I could get some weight back on them. Some only like it if the rodent is scruffed and standing up, some prefer their rodent to be scruffed and on all 4s and some have other weird quirks like dragging the rodent backwards by the tail and some just like it to wiggle a little bit. I've had some that want their rodent to move quickly, some slow and some even need me to literally toss it and they'll catch it sometimes mid air (found out when I dropped her rodent on accident). Most of them have now learned feeding time though and no longer need the special attention but some still require certain requirements to be met before they'll consider it.

I remember the first time I tried to feed Allure I had the mouse by the tail like I'd seen in youtube videos. He was looking at it real interested but I couldn't get him to strike. My sister pointed out that in Garrick's videos (he's who I got him from) that he held the mice by the scruff of the neck. Did that and bingo! He struck.

Usually I just hang the mouse there by it's tail until he gets it... I feed Dovah p/k though so usually it's still twitching when it gets in there ;) He hates the zombie dance...
My corn will take the food no matter what, I've never zombie danced for him.

For 6 out of 7 of my snakes I just hold the rat by the base of the tail. Most of the time I don't even have to move it. I have a couple that SLAM their rats every week without so much as a wiggle from my end. My BEL is much pickier, though, and her rat I hold by the scruff and fool her into thinking it's live. She's a "dinner and a show" kind of gal.

Looks like, based on the poll, the tail and the scruff are both pretty close.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to participate in this thread!

-Ricky