Quetzal has been worrying me a bit lately. He makes a small popping sound when he breathes right before he goes into shed. I've always figured that was just the skin getting loose in his nose as it stops once he's pulled it all off a few days later. But recently he's started to give me feeding problems, making me into a liar when I was bragging about his being an aggressive eater.

Last time he was fed (18th), he got a bit of substrate (cocohusk) stuck in his mouth, looked like it was getting stuck in the part where his tongue comes out, and he started flailing and yawning and rubbing his face on everything trying to remove it. I eventually had to hold his mouth open and pull it out that way, when I got it he sat in his warm hide and digested it properly, no regurge.

I tried to feed him this week (25th, dull but not blue) and he poked the mouse with his nose and then went back in his hide. Put it (frozen/thawed) in the other one over night and found him the next morning curled up (not constricting) and sleeping around it like it was his friend. Which of course ticked me off a bit, so I removed it since he was obviously not going to eat it and tried again in a few days (28th, eyes just cleared). Refused, so I brained it and left it in his warm hide and came back this morning to him sleeping on top of it like it was just a bumpy piece of substrate. Again removed it as it stank after being left on the heating pad while brained all night.

So today I figured I'd inspect him to see if I could tell if he was sick. He's in shed, but he's eaten for me before when completely blind so it doesn't make sense for him to suddenly decide not to eat. His belly's fine, there are a couple old marks from the previous burns that have healed and are just waiting to be peeled off, and his skin is getting crunchy which tells me he's going to slip out of it any day now. But while I was giving him a look over, I was about to try to look in his mouth when he gave me a nice big yawn and I got a peek in his mouth. It was shorter than the ones he does to reset his jaw after eating, his mouth looks good and is clear of mucus but there is a little bit of a darker reddish pink where the piece of substrate was. He started popping when he got dull and has since stopped, which has been another indicator that he's about to loose his shed.

And of course, since the first question is always "how's your husbandry", hot spot is 88-92, recently bumped it up to 90-94 in case he's sick and needs a boost to his immune system before he eats, resulting ambient is 80-82, cold spot is 75-77. Humidity is currently at 60-70% for his shed, usually kept at a gradient of 45-55%. He's 4 hides that he uses regularly (one at each end, two in the middle) plus another 2 that he'll poke into from time to time but doesn't use. Last meal was 14% of his body weight. Weight from then was 265g, he's currently 270g but hasn't pooped as he waits to do that until after shed.


So... is he traumatized from the stress of his last feeding? Since popping and not eating are early signs of an RI, if he doesn't feed this coming Monday, should I take him to the vet just in case? Or is he just being a butthead and he'll come around eventually? I'm about halfway done with the bag of mice from rodentpro, should I just find some rats about the same size and wiggle those at him to see if he's decided mice are gross?