Mites/Bugs from Feeder Mouse?

[maverickgtr]

Quick disclaimer: Well, I'm new to the site so if I do something wrong just let me know please!

My boyfriend and I have two ball pythons and one only eats live mice (the other happily eats frozen thawed, but our male refuses frozen) and since he recently moved to the area and the closest pet store that sells live feeder rats/mice is Petland, we decided to give it a shot. Well, the first few we got were fine, no problems or anything, but the last one we gave him (he readily ate it) we suspect had mites or bugs of some sort. We gave him the mouse two days ago and tonight while inspecting how badly his water bowl needed to be cleaned I noticed something moving. And upon closer inspection there were quite a few (10+) small winged bugs in his water bowl (water had mostly dried up). We haven't put anything new into his tank so it could only have come from the mouse.

My question is this: have any of you heard of small winged bugs coming from a mouse and can they be harmful to our ball? We have completely cleaned his tank top to bottom including his hide and water bowl and removed the substrate and placed some paper towels as a bottom until we can get new substrate tomorrow morning (we didn't discover the bugs until 11pm, when all pet stores and stores selling reptiles supplies had closed) and gave him a warm bath just in case.

[wilomn]

The winged bugs you found were most likely flies. They won't bother your snakes. They come in at the smell of dead flesh, ie a thawed rodent, or for poop, especially if the poop is in a bowl making poop soup.

Clean the cage out and you should be fine. As far as I know, there are no winged parasites for snakes.

[mykee]

I'll second that anything winged will not harm your ball python or rodents. They're not mites or ticks. As for what they're doing there: dirty environment; (poop/too much moisture).

[maverickgtr]

Alrighty thanks guys! His tank was completely cleaned with new substrate about two weeks ago and he'd barely pooped (under his hide right next to him... some times I have to wonder about him...) within the last couple days since we gave him the most recent mouse. But it was cleaned again last night and gets new substrate today.