Since I've owned my bp I've always fed him live mice in his cage with no problems. Unfortunately I should have excercised more caution. Yesterday I put the mouse inside and let Dante (my bp) do is his business.

As usual the mouse explored the cage for about a minute before Dante did his thing.

Unfortunately this time around when he struck the mouse he got about 3 pieces of aspen shavings lodged vertically inside his mouth. I took him out of the cage and removed the pieces without any incident. As far as I know he didn't injest any either. When I set him back in he went right back to the mouse and resumed his feeding.

Obviously I need to change my feeding habits after this incident. I just wanted to post this in case anyone else uses aspen substrate.

My question is, for those of you feeding live prey outside of your enclosure, how do you go about doing it?

I know back when I had a moniter, as a rule I would never go near it after it just ate. Usually it would still be in a feeding frenzy and handling it would be a major no no.

My bp is about the calmest snake around, but I was wondering if bp's are snippy after just eating. Thanks for your help.