Misadventures in Fine Dining

[Pengil]

Horatio and I had quite a time with his mouse tonight. He was waiting and ready to go... Maybe too ready! Ended up striking the water dish, and then laying on top of his mouse. He KNEW the mouse was around somewhere, but he couldn't see it, and he couldn't sense it's heat because he was sitting on it, so he just stared at me with a very, "Where is my dinner, woman?!" expression on his face. Was eventually able to retrieve the mouse and re-warm nd offer it, and he happily snatched it up. He's never had this problem with white mice, so I wonder if he had a bit of a harder time getting a bead on this brown one in dim light.

What are your stories about feeding time going a little less than smoothly?



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[Spink]

I've had similar experiences a couple times while feeding F/T mice. They see it and strike at it but miss and then either lay on it or make half an attempt to constrict it.

I doubt the fact of the mouse being brown and in dim light had much of a factor. These guys are mostly active and hunt during the night.

I've found that most of the misses are due to the mouse being a lack of appropriate temperature (95-100 degrees). After all, BP's rely heavily on heat to sense the location of their prey.

It is kind of cute to see them look a little oblivious but you did did the right thing by making it warm again and offer it back!

[Tonald Drump]

So temporarily me and my dad's beeps eat 2 large mice a week regularly since ratd are usually out, but as you know they're not too smart After my dad's constricted and killed both the mice, she only swallowed one and forgot about the other one, so I had to spend half an hour to get her to finally eat the other one. Mine, on the other hand, was so lazy that he constricted a mouse along with the wood branch it was walking on

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[Tila]

I was visiting my family home at Christmas one time so I brought a couple snakes with me to show off. My family in general love snakes, but even though I feed f/t they're still a bit wary of the process. I managed to talk them into watching a feed, selling them on points such as "the prey is swallowed whole," etc.

The baby hognose ended up taking the f/t pinky at a weird angle resulting in what I can only describe as a gutsplosion, after which she dragged an organ around the periphery her tub (maybe a liver?) smooshing against the walls as she travelled before finally finishing.

Then my ball python snapped at his small f/t rat hard enough he broke its leg off before swallowing the rest of it. I didn't know that had happened so as I was staring in shock at such a hard strike, the rat leg in his mouth looked like a broken jaw with all my snake's teeth out of place. I tried to just play it off but there was a solid minute that I think we were all internally panicking.

That remains the most carnage-filled feeding I've witnessed, which unfortunately means I'm back to wearing down my sister again, trying to talk her into getting into snakes: "Snakes are such quiet, peaceful, easy to care for pets and you want lots of them..." lol

[WhompingWillow]

Last night was the first time my husband fed our snake, including doing the prep on the F/T mouse. When I saw what was offered to Clark, who was happily constricting away, my first question was if he weighed that mouse. Turns out he thawed the biggest one in the package, which was more like a weaned than a hopper, and I knew instantly that it was too big. Still, we waited about an hour, at which point he hadn't made an attempt to actually eat the mouse. So I had my husband go in with tongs and retrieve the mouse from Clark. Boy was he pissed! Snapping at the air, going WTF, where did my dinner go... Long story short, we offered a more appropriately-sized mouse. He took it instantly and it was eaten within 10 minutes.

[Timelugia]

There was one time my snake took and constricted the prey normally, then tried to swallow it backwards. After a while I looked back in to check how she was doing and found rat urine dripped all over the substrate and found her staring very offended at the rat. I think she bit down on its bladder and got a mouthful.
She eventually got it down the right way.

[Alter-Echo]

Well, when I first got her, my snow king, Athena, would kill her prey then caress it lovingly with her face for a half hour before eating it... little serial killer that she is. Lol

My hognose, fraggle, will only eat fuzzy mice and insists on eating them sideways.

My old boa, Lolita, used to squeeze rabbits so hard that they would bleed from the mouth and mess up her substrate.