We found a pet shop up the road that sells live feeder rodents fairly cheap, so for now I've abandoned efforts to get our snakes on f/t. I just picked up a rat pup for our new red tail boa and a small rat for my little BP. Ruby (the boa) took the pup with absolutely no problem, and we've only had her since last night. The person we got her from said she could eat anytime so we figured we'd give it a shot and if she didn't take it, we've got somewhere to keep it temporarily. No worries there!

Gene is in the process of shedding, and his eyes just finished clearing up from the blue phase yesterday. Regardless, I knew he was hungry (he wouldn't take a f/t rat the two weeks I tried it), and he took a small rat with absolutely no problems. I feel fortunate that all of our snakes are great eaters .