Hello,

I am supplied by a local breeder. She always has great quality rats, very clean breeding set-up and is extremely helpful with my questions.

So I got my usual order of two rat pups (fed live to my male) and two weaner rats (fed to my female). I transported all four rats home together in a bucket. The issue was with the second rat for the female. I fed the female one freshly killed rat at night without any problems. I regrettably had to put the rat into the freezer to kill it because I ran out of CO2. She ate without any issues. I checked the tub before going to bed and everything was just fine. The next day I fed the second rat to her....again using the freezer ( I will not do that again). I put it in the freezer for about 30 min, let it sit out at room temp for another 30-40 min. Then put the rat into the tub. My snake ate in within 10 min.

This time after checking in on her after the meal I noticed 2 dozen small white bugs on the clean paper towel bedding. They looked like VERY small maggots. About four could fit on the tip of an eraser. They were only in the spot the the rat was in before she ate. I had to try to rub them to see any movement at all. I cleaned everything including my snake.

Any ideas? Are they dangerous to my snake? Should I be concerned about returning to my local breeder?