Frustrating feeding night---why?

[Spirit_Scale]

So this evening was supposed to be Ihysius weekly dinner.

Thawed out a sm/med size rat (90 g turns out the 'small' rats he was used to eating were in the 50g range), drove to my friend's place (he's staying there right now because he kept busting out of his tub and she's the only one with a glass tank that was empty for emergencies and has been there a week) and offered it to him. As is his usual he struck like a champ...

And then spent TWO HOURS trying eat the hindlegs and tail.

He just didn't seem to figure it out.
He was obviously very hungry, because he kept constricting it, moving it, eating and re-eating the tail and hindlegs...but ignored the head.
This is unusual for him---normally he gets done eating in about 15 minutes---very quickly finds the head and om nom nom down it goes.

I gave up and left him with his rat---if he doesn't eat it in a few hours my friend will toss it and I'll offer him his 'normal' sized small 50g rat in a few days.

Is it simply a case of the rat was too big for him to recognize what to do? These larger rats were the only ones they had on hand for me to get, but it didn't seem like itd be problem...I guess not. I know it was fully thawed (heck I even ran it under hot water after it thawed for 8 hours in a tub of cool water to warm it up and make it extra appealing)...so I can't think of any other reason for him to do that.

[karmak]

My girl monty will do that. She likes mice, so we feed her a live mouse and a frozen thaw rat after.
Somtimes she will try for a half hour eating the mouse and cant do it, but will take the rat easily. But she does it all the time. Some times i have to put the rat nose right in her face and hold it with tongs so she can start eating it right.

[LLLReptile]

Sometimes, snakes are just goof balls. It was probably just a fluke, and with the next rat, he will take it down with absolutely no issues whatsoever.

-Jen

[Spirit_Scale]

Good news

My friend called to say she checked on him and unless the rat is a magical zombie who can scale glass there was no sight of it---and one fat happy BP.

Goofball lol, he tried every possible other way to eat it besides the head-first right way. I'll give him an A for effort n creativity though