I just had a lovely experience of exploding rats. My very enthusiastic mahogany girl squeezed her rat so hard the insides came... out. Yay. A similar feat was performed by my enchi queen bee male. Wonderful. Those two are getting a bath as soon as possible (By the way, when can I give them a bath? After the 48 hours?), I so do not want to handle snakes covered in dried rat guts... Another rodent lost a leg, and another lost the tail somehow. Uh, yeah, I'm thinking I heated them for too long or maybe they were just out too long.

I haven't had an exploding rat problem before, and I think I'd rather not have the issue again, thank you very much. I usually leave them in my snake room for five-eight hours for anything larger than an abnormally small rat pup. After that, I put them under a heat lamp for 15-30 minutes. I think I may have heated them too long. The snakes eat like clockwork this way, but I'm wondering if maybe doing something to my feeding routine could prevent this from happening again. Because seriously... EWWWWWWWW. So how long do you thaw your f/t rodents and how do you heat them?

Any issues I should look for in the snakes that ate any of these rodents? Hunger strikes, medical issues..? I'm hoping not, and I'm guessing no on the medical issues seeing as I'm pretty sure I just heated them too long, but it doesn't hurt to ask.