Since I have had my ball pythons I had never experienced a problem until tonight. The care of my snakes had been easy as can be. Good appetites, good sheds, easy to switch to f/t, good growth etc. Well tonight I fed my snakes and I saw that my Mojave seemed to not finish swallowing his rat. To my horror I saw that he had an aspen chip stuck in his mouth (separate tub feeders are allowed to say "I told you so!" at this point). I didn't know for sure what to do so I observed him for a while hoping that he would be able to dislodge it himself. He was traveling around his cage trying to spit it out with no success. I was afraid to go to bed with him in that condition in the event that it would get stuck in his throat and choke him to death and I was afraid to try to remove it because I was afraid of the snake getting hurt from struggling while I tried to subdue it. I emailed Heather of WWW.Heathersherps.com and asked her what I should do. She promptly responded with instructions on how to hold the snake while sitting in a chair subduing the body under my arm and firmly grasping just behind the head and removing the chip with a Qtip. I was reluctant to try this because it seemed to me that this would require at least 3 hands. She offered me encouragement to do it and it worked like a charm. I am very grateful to Heather for her help. Some may see the moral of the story as "Don't feed on aspen" , but I think that it is "You can always count on Heather when the chips are down".