Oh yes...when you feed lots of snakes over the years, you can almost write a book about the 50+ ways for snakes to take their prey...

So many different things to try...there are some snakes that don't strike but if you lightly rub the rat's nose under their chin, they'll open their mouth & eat it too.
(talk about lazy...haha!) Your BP is learning "manners" LOL!

I used to have a rat snake* that would carefully eat f/t (or fresh killed) that I held between my fingers...but, if I had it on the flat palm of my hand, she wouldn't
touch it, even though she wanted to eat. It actually appeared that she hesitated because in the middle of my hand, she got my scent as much or more than the
rodent, & she didn't want to make a mistake...she was too cute! (*that was a Trans Pecos, fyi)