I just wanted to share a story with you guys about my experience last night.

Last night I tried to feed a live mouse to my snake(with every attempt that I have made he has only taken live - but only twice since I have owned him). This was probably my fourth try with this particular mouse. At first my snake ignored him, then poked his head out after about 30 minutes. The snake seemed very interested in the mouse for the next 20 minutes. I know you are only supposed to leave them in for 45 minutes tops, but he seemed interested so I let him have a shot. Also, the snake was out and I wanted to protect myself from any unnecessary dangers.

I thought he was going to strike, but never did. Every time the mouse got close the snake got scared and backed off. Finally the mouse started messing with the snake. He was trying to get into my snakes hide and was and getting up in his face. It was almost like my snake wanted nothing to do with it, but was defending himself. The mouse went up to my snake and tried to scratch his face one time on the right side of my snake's face. My snake backed off and then came back out to defend himself some more. At this point I wanted to mouse out, but didn't want to put myself in a risky position, since both the snake and the mouse were looking pretty pissed. The mouse came up again and scratched my snake's face on the left side. I yelled, "Backoff Mother ******" and the snake and mouse luckily went separate directions, with the snake going into his hide. I was able to reach in with my tongs and get that mean mouse out. After I put the mouse back in his cage(I considered killing it), my snake stuck his head out. He had a very small dot of blood under his eye, but his eyes looked alright. I am going to take him out tonight and give him a better investigation, just to double check.

I hope all is alright and I learned a valuable lesson. I don't think I did anything wrong. One could argue that I should have taken the mouse out earlier, but the snake looked interested and I didn't want to disturb him.

What would you have done different? I know there are always risks associated with feeding live, so I am going to try to switch to frozen. He should be getting hungry by next week and hopefully we can have some success!