My little rescued bp is doing really well, she's put on about 10g since we've had her getting her up to a whopping 59g. Her husbandry is perfect, she's been eating like a champ; the problem now is I can't seem to keep her damn food alive.

We picked up 4 hopper mice, assuming (mistakenly I guess) that they'd be easy to care for so we wouldn't have to drive up to Tucson (1.5hrs away) to acquire live feeders for her until we can switch her over to f/t. She got in one meal, then two died (we think as a result of an accident involving some duct tape), and I just found the other one dead in the water dish we set up for them. I'm assuming it drowned.

Clearly, we needed to do more research before trying to keep these guys. Can anyone give us some input? The quick and dirty research we did before hand, it seemed like the set up we had was fine. We had them in a small plastic enclosure we picked up at Walmart, I used some of the aspen bedding we have around, gave them a water dish, and we put strawberry and zucchini pieces for them to eat.

We bought a water bottle to hang in there instead of the dish, but it turned out to be too big. We tried duct taping it to the lid but I think maybe the heat loosened the tape and it fell on them. I found all three stuck to the tape, so I removed them, checked to make sure they were ok (and they seemed to be...), replaced the bottle with a dish, then day after day I've been finding them dead.

Any help, any input, would be appreciated!