Well Artemis will go hungry again this week, as she did not eat her f/t mouse. It's not that I expected her to, being a young Ball, fed on live, from a petstore, seeming to be preshed (I removed the one eyecap with a warm moist cloth, it was making me paranoid about the health of her eye), with a new and nervous owner who's never fed a snake before.

I took the mouse out of the little baggy and placed it in cool water for a half an hour until it was nice and soft, and then put it in warm water to get the scent going in the room (I put the little thawing bowl on top of the screen on her tank so the smell could travel better). I then took the mouse and dried it off with a paper towel and edged it under the lip of her heat lamp, the bulb was not touching it, and I was there the whole time watching. I left it like this for a minute or two until it was nice and warm and fairly dry.

At this point my curious (and honestly annoyingly snoopy) mother comes in for the show, even though I attempted to ask her to leave, she's a strong willed woman and I must relent to her wishes. She stood with me in my room watching Artemis for a good 10 minutes. I had removed the climbing log and one hidey house, and later also removed the water dish for ease of movement.

I used my tongs and zombie danced it, twitched it, dangled it, waved it, left it laying in front of her, put it in the hide box, let HER get in the hide box and dance/twitch/dangle/waved it in front of the hole, and nothing. Mom left from boredom and I continued for a while until It was apparent that it was stressing her out. Her tongue had been flicking up until now, but now she was turning her head away and not flicking her tongue. So I re placed everything into the tank, misted her well and fed the mouse to my kitten.



Maybe by next feeding time she'll be done shedding and in a better mood, and maybe mom will be dissuaded from trying to observe, because I'm sure her hovering made it worse for Artemis, it certainly made ME uncomfortable, because I didn't really know what I was doing wrong if anything and it was embaressing because my snake wouldn't eat. Oh well.....