Quote Originally Posted by Kara View Post
You could certainly clutter it up more to help her feel more secure, but it's not necessary to buy additional accessories like plants or rocks to do so quite yet. In my experience, layers of paper, such as kraft or newspaper, make a good substrate in this sort of situation, as you can easily fold and arrange multiple layers for your snake to hide under. Sitting between/beneath layers of paper mimics their natural behavior of hiding beneath leaf litter.

As an alternative, you could also use a particulate substrate such as the prococo chip-and-fiber mix, or even long-fiber sphagnum moss (Chilean or New Zealand are popular and easy to find on Amazon). By doing so, you could provide a thick layer of substrate for your snake to burrow into that will also double as a hide, and allow your python to feel secure regardless of where it is in the enclosure. If you do so, keep in mind you'll want to have extra on hand to replace when it becomes soiled to avoid ammonia buildup in the enclosure. As I'm sure you're aware, these snakes can pee a LOT!

At this point I would advise against feeding outside of the cage. It really isn't a necessary practice, and can stress the animal by all the additional activity of moving to and from a separate tub/location. I'd make a few tweaks to your enclosure as described above, let the snake settle in for another week or so, and then offer prey at night after the lights go out.

Have you been offering live, pre-killed or F/T?
I always feed my snakes inside the enclosure, I folded a chunk of cardboard to take up some of the open space. She's eaten live for me once, but her breeder said she would take f/t. i've offered prekilled and shes shown no interest. Apologies for the crummy picture.