I do it different than most people. I DO NOT feed in my snakes normal enclosure. I move them all to their separate feeding container and give them about 10-15 minutes in there before giving them the food. To defrost the food, I heat up a cup of hot water (3 minutes in the microwave is perfect), then drop the frozen rodents (all in ziploc bags) into the cup. I check the temperature of the mice before feeding. It usually takes about 20 minutes for it to be the right temperature. I have never had any problems with feeding this way. And while they are eating, I clean their normal enclosures. Now, once I get a rack system and start breeding, I will probably do things differently. But the snakes I have now are pets that small children play with, so even if it is a myth that feeding in the normal enclosure will make an aggressive snake, that's still a chance I'm not taking. In your situation with your snake not eating, I would wait and try again. Settling in can take a while sometimes. I have had a couple times when mine refused to eat until I reheated the mouse so that may an issue too. It stayed in there with them long enough to cool off and I guess they prefer it to be warm.