I feed all my snakes on sheets of printer paper but newspaper or cardboard will work too. I just hold the rats by the tail and when the snakes grab them and coil them, i just lift the whole mass up and slide a sheet of printer paper under them and put the mass down on it. The little snakes, i just hold the mouse tail and they will coil while the mouse is in the air lol. Then i just put down the sheet with my other hand and set them down on it. I also will sometimes ninja pick pieces of aspen off the rats as they are swallowing it with my forceps. They dont seem to care as long as i dont tug on the rat itself.