I've only fed our ball python a few times now. Usually, my son and I do it together. He likes to make the rat "dance", as our girl won't strike unless it's moving a bit. We use quite long tongs (haemostat?) and usually once our girl strikes and coils around her rat, I can just slide them out. Last time, she had a really strong grip and it seemed like anytime I pulled she came with the tongs (it was also a little too close to the entrance to her enclosure (it opens at the front), so pulling would have pulled her right out!). I just held the tongs until she relaxed a little (probably thought she had sufficiently killed her prey).

Am I doing this right? Should I wait until she thinks she's "killed" and relaxes a bit to remove the tongs? What do other people do? Also, I don't know if I have locking or non-locking tongs - I didn't even know there was a difference until I did a quick search and read a bit - now I'll have to check, but I think they might be locking ones.