Hi all,

I had a rather strange experience with my normal yesterday while feeding. She's been behaving like she's in shed and has been for about two weeks but has not gone opaque. She's been kind of pissy and has hidden in her hide for most of the period. Having had it been two weeks yesterday between feedings I figured I'd try and see if she'd take a rat (she eats live mediums). She was VERY agressive and ornery when I opened the tank. She was hissing at me and violently flinched if I ever touched her. None of this was a problem as I figured she was likely partially blind by the old scales still on her eyes as she had not shed yet. I put in the rat, she hit it HARD, but where she normally gets a head bite she grabbed the shoulder instead. Having strangled it, she started to try to swallow it, but it was obvious that she could not see, as she could not find the head. She basically felt her way around the body until she found it (she even tried from the tail but that did not work either). Ultimately, within five minutes or so she had the rat positioned right and was happily pulling it in. I've just never seen this kind of behaviour, where BPs can't see and have to sort of feel their way around. Is this common during shed? I half-expected her not to feed at all, but I guess she was hungry enough to take it.