Hello all! I'm new to the forums, although I've been scanning and reading along for a long time now.

I just recently became the proud mom of a wonderful 6 year old ball python, Spencer. I rescued him from a pretty nasty situation, and throughout the last 2 months have been nursing him back to health after receiving him with pretty bad scale rot. He has since shed and is almost completely healed. He's the best snake I've ever worked with (I work with anacondas and other various large snakes/herps at an aquarium.) and I love this animal a lot. I've really bonded with him already - he's a gentle, good natured snake that I feel really strongly attached to already. He's been gentle enough for my little brothers to hold and handle, helping them become exposed to snakes in a positive way for the first time. I'm not a religious/spiritual/superstitious person but something felt so right about this snake the moment I happened upon the rescue situation that resulted in my adopting him.

The woman I got him from said he'd last eaten a week prior and that he was a consistent eater/had never really gone on any hunger strikes. She said he'd eaten both live and frozen/thawed in the past (she wasn't much help in giving me information about his past, unfortunately) In the weeks I've had him, I've offered him many different options, giving him time in between feedings, space, darkness, etc. I've always offered f/t - both large mice and small/medium rats of all colors. I've left them overnight and even tried braining my f/t. I've been in the animal husbandry field for a little while - I've fed my fair share of animals to other animals. I really, really didn't want to have to resort to live feeding, so I bought a gerbil and decided to use it's scent on f/t. Nothing.

Finally, tonight I'd had enough. I wanted him to eat so badly, and the gerbil I'd bought had been relatively passive so I felt confident at least putting the two together in the same container. As soon as Spencer saw the gerbil, he lunged for it and very quickly constricted and began eating it. Although I'm relieved that he's finally eaten...I've never felt weirder about anything before.

Like I said, I'm not religious or spiritual or anything. I'm an environmental biology/ecology major and I'm all too used to the concept of predation. Why do I feel so weird? I'm just kind of freaking out - shaking, sweating, stomachs-in-knots...I feel so wrong about this. Why?!

I do sea turtle necropsies every saturday on juvenile sea turtles that have tragically washed up on our shores cold stunned - I am able to accept this because I know there was nothing we could've done to prevent their deaths and they're teaching us about how to better protect them in the future. I've watched plenty of predator/prey interactions in the wild for my studies ...I thought for sure I could handle this, but I feel so responsible for a needless death. Was I too quick to jump straight to feeding live? Should I have waited longer before resorting to this? I just wanted what was best for Spencer, who I fully accept is a predator and needs prey. I just feel like in the end it was the wrong thing to do.

Has anyone ever experienced this feeling???