Hello again -- my 14" ball python is feeding well. I just fed her for the second time since I purchased her. She's in a 20L with a water dish in the center, a hide on either side, coco substrate and some artificial plants throughout to make her feel more secure. She has a UTH with a thermostat around 90 and a halogen heat lamp that keeps the ambient temp around 80. I have foam core around the tank to help insulate and cardboard up top on the screen to help keep the humidity in. Right now the humidity is around 50.

The behavior I'm wondering about is this: I gave her a frozen/thawed mouse, and she quickly coiled around it, squeezed for a bit then pulled it into her hide. I covered up the front of her tank to give her some privacy while she ate. When I peeked in on her, I noticed that she was back out towards the center of the tank with her mouse -- and it was apparent that she had just drug the thing through her water dish, since it was now sopping wet. She was working on swallowing it down when I covered her up again.

Is this a normal BP behavior or just a peculiarity of my snake? Is it possible that this is because she's "used" to eating mice that are slightly damp? I took the time to dry this one off after watching some videos on feeding frozen/thawed but the previous one I didn't. I'm sure that the employees at the PetCo where I bought her didn't take the time to dry off the mouse either. This could be a completely paranoid question, and I decided to ask since I couldn't find anything on it via Google -- and well, if it is JUST that she likes to eat soggy mice, I'd like to have a good guess at it so I can potentially save myself the trouble of drying off a dead mouse!