Alright... more weird behavior. Halp.

[redshepherd]

I only say "more", because I spy another behavior thread recently. :x Ahh, I apologize for making threads so often.

The story is... I attempted to feed Blackout a rat. She struck and coiled in a second, but fell in her water bowl. She was having a hard time eating it (while a bit of blood leaked out from somewhere and tainted the water), and ended up losing interest over the next hour. Somehow she became VERY focused on getting OUT of her tub/poking her head out really fast and staring at me whenever I open the top, and stayed in this really alert/attentive state to me and my hand movements but not on the rat. (I swear I washed my hands and all with soap) So I took the rat out to try feeding again later.

I just went to check on her 3 hours later (I was ATTEMPTING to change out the water that now has a bit of rat blood in it), and she is STILL in this same pose/weird state of being extremely attentive to me and my hands with her upper body raised and tongue flicking everywhere. She's still entirely outside her hide. When I tried to unclip the tub, she followed my hands quickly right along the tub walls, like one of those cats moving their heads along to a toy. She isn't striking, just following my hand VERY quickly... even bumping her nose along the sides of the tub in doing so. Not relaxing at all even in the quiet dark for the past few hours.

But she's been in this extremely attentive/alert state like this even when the rat was in her cage, like I said, but she refused to eat the rat. If anyone can enlighten me on what is going on, that would be great. o_o I just haven't seen her like this since I got her.

I'm going to randomly guess that since she has the smell of rat literally all over her cage now and rat blood in her water bowl, it's making her freak out a little... lol. But if not... please do tell. o_o Pray what did I do wrong. Maybe I'm just freaking out and this is A-okay totally normal A+++ hungry ball python who thinks I am more delicious than rat.

[Eric Alan]

Sounds like a fun experience! There is a pretty simple explanation though.

BPs are naturally programmed to go into feed mode when food becomes available. They do this because instinct tells them that it may be awhile until their next meal, so get to hunting while the hunting's good, right? It depends on the snake, but as you learned, this behavior can last some time. No matter how well you think you washed you hands, they were still warm and likely still had a scent that she could pick up on.

As far as what you did wrong? Absolutely nothing near as I can tell. She just wasn't expecting the dunk tank and a wet meal and that threw her off her game a bit. Not enough to override the rest of her behavior though. Just feed again on your next regular scheduled day and she'll be fine. Only try to avoid setting her up to take a swim as best as you can, OK?

[Smitty33]

Mines done that a couple times. the first time I retrieved the rat from the water dish reheated it with blow drier and he struck/coiled and ate it. The second time I just let him go and he ate it fine half submerged.
Maybe in your case if the rat was fully submerged he just lost where it was at. With sent everywhere and the water tainted with blood he was just unable to pinpoint exactly where it was as it was hidden under all that blood and rat scented water.

[bmack]

You didn't do anything wrong. I am going through the exact same thing with mine right now. Although my situation is a bit different it has a lot of similarities. Mine is just still hungry. He knows he gets fed at night so at night if I get close to the hide he pops out and follows me. He's ready to move up on prey size. Yours probably smelled rat and knew it was supposed to eat. That's probably all and it'll probably calm down in a day or two.

[DVirginiana]

Sounds pretty typical. Everything between striking and eating is a pretty ingrained pattern for BPs, so they'll act funny for awhile if it gets interrupted for whatever reason. It's the same reason if you go to shake someone's hand (a slightly less ingrained pattern, but still a pattern for humans) and then pull away and interrupt the pattern it throws them off their game for a bit. You didn't do anything wrong. She'll probably be back to acting normal before the day's over.

[redshepherd]

Thanks for the replies, guys. 8 hours later, she is finally back in her hide being normal again.

It did seem like she lost where the rat was at in the water bowl, because it was almost completely submerged... And then she just eventually totally lost interest in it. The thing that struck me as weird last night is that I actually did take the rat out of the bowl after an hour, heat it up with a blowdryer, and plop it in front of her, but she didn't care for it... while focused hungrily on my hands and kept trying to find a way out. LOL.

[DVirginiana]

Unfortunately human hands are similar in size and temperature to a live rat. If they're excited they will sometimes gravitate toward your hands and ignore the actual prey lol.

[Ax01]

i thought my Elphaba would drop her snack (a f/t fuzzy) into the water of her feeding tub too.

over troubled water



yes, gotcha!



snacked!

[DVirginiana]

Elphaba

lol Love those books. And the musical.

[Ax01]

lol Love those books. And the musical.

i plan on bringing the whole book and cast home.