Hissing after eating?

[Emily Hubbard]

Tonight my 240gm BP ate a 30gm mouse (the smallest rats I can find locally are 50gm, so I am feeding her an adult mouse every 4 days until she passes 300gm, which she will soon, she is growing like crazy despite the prey being on the small side for her.) She only eats f/t but I always supervise to make sure everything goes ok (and because it is awesome to watch.)

After the tail went down, she perched her neck up on her water bowl like normal (she likes to elevate herself while she realigns her jaws **shrug**) but instead of yawning, she opened her mouth and "coughed" and a hiss came out. She did it three times. I have only heard her hiss once when I had to get her out of her hide one time in the middle of the day and she wanted to part of it and she actually hissed at me. Jerk. But this was different, the only way I can describe it as a little cough but with a hissy noise. Anyone seen that before?

[The Serpent Merchant]

I've never heard anything like you are describing before. It probably ins't anything of importance but I know that it would freak me out if I were in your shoes.

[Emily Hubbard]

Yeah, it totally freaked me out a little. But then she did a few normal yawns and slithered back into her her hide like a good ball python. She was looking at me when she did it, so I was wondering if maybe just this time, she really didn't want me staring at her, or for whatever reason I caught her by surprise and she felt threatened? I always watch her til she is done though, so it's nothing new. I really don't know what it was about, I was just afraid she was trying to clear her airway or something, like she swallowed "wrong." I don't know, I can't unhinge my jaws and consume a cheeseburger, the whole process will always just seem very wrong to my mammalian self.

[The Serpent Merchant]

Maybe a leg or something tickled her throat going down we'll never know for sure sounds like everything is fine now though which is all that really matters. It never ceases to amaze me how much these animals can stress us out.

[Emily Hubbard]

It is soooo true. People who don't keep snakes just don't get it. Even though the "relationship" to the animal is different, I always tell people you do not love a snake any less than you love a cat or dog. They may not love you back in the same way, but we have chosen to take them into our care, so any abnormal behavior must be looked at with concern. They cannot whimper when they are hurting, or bark when they alarmed, so we have to watch them even more closely and look for the subtlest of signals that says something may be wrong.

Anyway, she seems fine, whatever her hissing weirdness was. I think maybe she was just mad at me for reasons unknown. I have only experienced hissing to mean "back off" so that is all I can go with. Not sure how I offended her, but apparently I did. Sorry sweetie.

[Slim]

The only female BP I ever kept used to stick her entire head into the water bowl to drink, then came up and spurted and sputterd and wheezed water out of her nose. Scared the bejesus out of me the first SEVERAL times I saw her do that. I asked the breeder I got her from about it and his sage words of wisdom were, "Snakes just do weird stuff some times."

[Emily Hubbard]

"Snakes just do weird stuff some times."

Hahaha! That is too good, and too true. Crazy little beasts.