OK, my favorite store in town is closing its doors, a great place run by one enthusiastic herp and fish person. I always knew I could count on him for high quality feeders and advice. This is the same person who let me meet his snakes and convinced me they're not awful creatures.

This left me with only two options in town for buying rats. Several people have told me that one of the stores in town (Petco) has had on and off issues with their f/t rats killing snakes. The other place sells boxed rats, and a box of two small f/t rats goes for between $12 and $13. That's over $6 per rat. I consider this price gouging, and have an issue with supporting something like that. After looking through this forum for good on line sources of rats, I bought a decent supply from Big Cheese.

But my question is, how could f/t rats kill snakes? With a big box store, I'd guess that they would get their supply from some major supplier. Mammal diseases shouldn't affect snakes, right? And as long as the rats are thawed, they probably wouldn't hurt the snake, who wouldn't eat a frozen one anyway, correct? So how would a f/t rat kill a snake? Is there something in some of them to watch out for? The rats from Big Cheese look real good, but I'd still like to know if there's an issue somewhere so I don't make any mistakes. Or is it likely the snakes died from other reasons, and Petco rats took the blame?