Thanks for the feedback. I'll wait till a week is up and then offer a live small adult mouse in the enclosure. Hopefully the cage size isn't an issue but I'll be sure to keep in mind if difficulties continue. I won't try the feeding tank idea again... my thinking there was only in regard to ingestion of substrate. My corn snake likes to slither a few victory laps after nabbing prey (even f/t), so I put him in the feeding tank to avoid combing up substrate, and he never objected, so thought I'd try once with the ball. Definitely didn't help matters, so I won't be doing that again.