Well, once again Petco didn't have any frozen rats and I'm still putting off ordering any until I move so that I don't have to move or waste them. Unnamed is still in blue, as s/he was last weekend (whoever heard of blue eyes for over a week?), but I figured s/he had to be hungry at this point, so I bought 2 small rats (the medium ones had two nearly dead in the cage). We brought them home and Adrian claimed to be brave enough to whack them, so I was brave enough to let her.

The first one went fine and dandy, into the pillowcase, pillowcase meets tree at sufficient velocity, rat instantly dead. The second one hit the tree at the wrong angle, though, and just stunned the rat, so she had to take another whack. That one was forceful enough to split the bottom of the pillowcase and send the little rat skidding across the deck, twitching all the way. We were both traumatized, but he stopped twitching within a few seconds, so it was still quicker than being killed by a snake.

Unnamed was quite skeptical about eating an obviously dead rodent, despite the performance it put on for her. I finally gave up and tried leaving it still again, and s/he finally decided it was indeed food and spent the next several minutes trying to eat it tail-first. Finally, s/he went around to the head and took it down -- not wasting any energy striking or coiling, mind you. S/he wasn't interested in the second one, so I'm giving it a half hour to get eaten by another snake and then freezing it if not eaten.

Despite the unpleasant scene with the second rat, I was relieved by how quickly it was over for the rat and how little force was actually required to kill them humanely. Now that I know that, I think I can do it again.