oh my god you guys! i was laughing so hard reading all this.
my girl only eats live & i've had one in blue feeding attempt with her but i actually didnt see the blue eyes at first & after 2 misses the rat got defensive & tried to have a face to face with her so i took it out. after i realized her eyes were blue & she couldnt see i never attempted an in blue feeding again.

salamander -
nonchalantly open his face
?!? loved that!

got into his water bowl and dropped it and couldn't figure out how to snorkel his way to the rat's head so he could eat it.
Had to fish the rat out
my girl has ended up in a water dish upon striking/coiling the rats. she's darn near drowned one & herself but coiled more to raise her face out of the water & in doing so she got the rats face out too. she's dropped a few rats in the water upon letting go & i had to go in & fish it out for her & when i set it down she picked it up & swallowed it, no problem. one time she'd dropped the rat but it was still touching her & the second i started to move it out of the water she felt that movement & spun around apparently thinking it had somehow come back to life so she killed it again.
since the near self drowning incident i've begun removing the water dishes for feedings.

what about backwards feedings? ya'll get those too? i saw this for the very first time ever in my nyx's 11 months here. she had struck but grabbed the rats thigh & after she killed it she worked her mouth sideways ending up at the butt & it took her awhile to work her jaws over the rats rump & i had quite a hoot over seeing the rat's face disappearing into her mouthy abyss.
usually i get a hoot over the way she seemingly slurps the rats tail spaghetti style as its going down, lol.

i have seen her try to swallow a rat sideways like she thought it was just gonna fold in half for her, rofl!
i wish my girl would take f/t or even prekilled but every time i've ended up with a rat mysteriously dying & tried to offer it to her she'd look at me like "um, i did not kill that. " she'd turn her nose up at it & i'd be left feeling like the scolded waitress that got an order wrong! :