Female striking at anything!

[Gloryhound]

We have a 1600 gram normal BP female and she has just went nuts recently. She strikes at you the minute you open the cage. She had been off feed for about 2 to 3 weeks and then she ate a 130 gram rat. My wife performs cleans her cage once or twice over the next 5 days and takes her out and weighs her on day 4. She goes to feed her on day 5 and she strikes at my wife while she opens the cage. My wife puts the rat in and she has it coiled in like 5 seconds. Today 2 days later my wife pulls her out and she strikes at me! We figure she is hungry, so we put another rat in with her. She strikes at the rat like 3 times in quick succesion, but only manages to throw the rat to the front of the tub. We try leaving the rat in and monitoring it, but the rat is having none of this and pulls up the front corner of the paper to make a wall between it and the snake. After trying to get the rat to go back for 15 minutes or so and say Hi we decide to remove the rat. We get the rat out, but it made a mess of the cage so my wife pulls her out and I clean her cage. My wife puts her back in and closes the tub. A couple minutes later my wife walks in front of the tub and she strikes at the front of the tub. I walk in front of the rack and she does the same a couple minutes later. We put a cover over the front of her tub as we don't want her to hurt herself by striking at anything that walks in front of the tub.

Is this a normal "I'm hungry" behavior?

Do big girls go through a phase in the overall breeding cycle that makes them extremely aggressive? (We were not going to start anything with her until next month as far as breeding becouse that is when quarantine is over.)

Anyone else have any ideas of why she would start to do this? Tub temps have remained the same 90 hot side 80 cool. Humidity has fluctuated between 50% and 60%, I think once it may have dropped to 45% for 6-12 hours, but that was a while ago.

Thanks in advance!

[NickP]

I think she might just be a bit stressed. Maybe leave her alone for a day or two?

[FatBoy]

Picked up a girl a couple months ago from a pet store. Held her at the store, on the way home, and after I got her home. Put her up to settle in, now anytime we walk by, try and open her tub, anything, she is striking. I have to use gloves to pick her up for cleaning. She strikes the gloves and when she realizes she is not hurting me she stops. I have even seen her strike herself when I pick her up. I think snakes can be just tempered bad, just like dogs, cats, or even people. Some people are just mean!! LOL She is just down right MEAN!

[frankykeno]

The fast strikes without constriction on that rat are defensive, not feeding, strikes. Her way of driving a prey away that she doesn't want to eat right then basically.

How long have you had her? It sounds very recent as you mentioned she's still in quarantine. Sometimes, these adults, when they first come in they give them impression of being easy natured or easy to handle when they really aren't. Davy and Tracy Barker have a write up about this in their book and it's just invaluable information. Basically they say this submissive behaviour at first is more about the snake being in shock and just not really "caring". They call it the "lights are on but nobody's home" syndrome.

As the snake settles in, it begins to engage in it's life. For some of them that means they start exploring, they eat, they allow handling, or alternately they ball up defensively. For others, like your female, they can become very actively defensive and stressed.

We have a snake, Brannagh, that was like yours. She was a pet store find (dumped there literally in a box at their front door). Struck at anything and everyone, the pet store employees were too scared to feed her. She was about 1,900 grams back then. If you do a search here using her name you'll likely find threads where I described our first months with her working to get her settled and safe to be around.

All I can tell you without writing a book here, is that it's about small steps, a committment to working with the snake, about developing safe handling routines, simple routines done over and over until the snake finally gets that you aren't a risk to it, firm and consistent handling, etc. I can't say that all snakes will respond as Brannagh has but I can tell you that the crazy 1,900 gram snake everyone was afraid of, is now a 3,400 gram female that my kids handle. We haven't heard even a hiss out of the big girl in probably 2 years.

Just try to see that she's not being aggressive or mean really. She's an adult snake, without the ability to figure out what's just happened in her life. She doesn't know you and your wife want the best for her. She's just instinctively trying to survive in a situation she cannot even begin to comprehend. It's up to you two to make the right choices for her so she has a chance to become like our Brannagh.

If I can be of any help or support, please don't hesitate to contact me by PM as well as of course in the threads with specific questions. I'm not snake whisperer or expert, but my husband and I have been there with a snake like yours and would be happy to help in anyway we can.

[Beardedragon]

My adult female will strike at anything while she is in shed, yet be great tempered when she is not. Could she be in shed?

[Gloryhound]

We are planning on trying that hammerhead.

Frankykeno thank you. Your old posts do have a lot of good info in them. We are going to back off on her until Wednesday and then we will try handling her before her normally scheduled meal. (My wife normally handles her while I get to play with the rat and get it in her cage to get the sent going. We will watch for if she strikes without grabbing or actually coils around it. We may even try F/T since she was eating that supposedly once in a while before we got her. F/T may not seem as threatening and further help to make her comfortable.

Beardeddragon,
Her eyes are not clouding over yet, but from experience with our little guys some seem to cloud over a week or two before sheding and others seem to cloud over and shed all in what seems like a couple days.

[frankykeno]

We are planning on trying that hammerhead.

Frankykeno thank you. Your old posts do have a lot of good info in them. We are going to back off on her until Wednesday and then we will try handling her before her normally scheduled meal. (My wife normally handles her while I get to play with the rat and get it in her cage to get the sent going. We will watch for if she strikes without grabbing or actually coils around it. We may even try F/T since she was eating that supposedly once in a while before we got her. F/T may not seem as threatening and further help to make her comfortable.

Beardeddragon,
Her eyes are not clouding over yet, but from experience with our little guys some seem to cloud over a week or two before sheding and others seem to cloud over and shed all in what seems like a couple days.

Couple of things....

you are removing her, then placing the live rat in her enclosure then putting her back in? Just my thoughts here but handling any snake when they are hungry is often a recipe for a bite, especially one showing that she's willing to have a go at you. I'd suggest instead, to pre-scent, that you get a small rodent proof container (well ventilated though), place the live rat in it, place it on top of her enclosure on the warm side and just walk away for about an hour.

She'll scent the rat and detect it's movement and most likely be keyed up and ready. Then just quietly and with minimal fuss introduce the rat into her home at the furthest point from where she is. This gives her time to set up her strike and get a good bead on the prey's heat signature.

F/T might be a good idea if she's more used to prey presented that way. ASF might be another idea as some BP's can't resist a nice ASF. You could also try a rat fuzzy (that's a rat about 9 to 14 days of age). Their eyes are still closed, they have no erupted teeth yet so are safe to leave in her enclosure overnight with her. It's a very small prey item likely for her size but it may trigger her to want to eat again.

If movement near her enclosure triggers a strike you might want to either move her to a dark, quiet room (large walk-in closet even) or place a light dark cloth over the front of her enclosure. I have old dark blue or green pillowcases I use for this purpose. You might also do a search here for the "newspaper trick". It's a sure winner and we used it with Brannagh for a time.

I would start handling her under very controlled conditions for very short, quiet periods of time. Not when she's hungry, not when she's just eaten, not when she's in shed cycle though. Just work on being able to remove her from her home, hold her for a moment (she may struggle so control that head), then return her to her home. Repeat regularily using the exact same hand movements and simple routine. If she's like Brannagh at some point it will get through her snakey brain that nothing nasty is happening to her and all the fuss in the world isn't going to change the simple handling you are doing.

Slowly overtime you can extend the handling experience but at first, if you can get 1 minute of calm behaviour, it's enough. We made it a rule to never return Brannagh to her enclosure until she stopped fighting us (and she fought hard). As soon as she calmed, even for a second, then she could go back "home". We made sure handling occurred in a controlled area and none of our kids were present, also we wore gloves to protect us.