I agree...the only thing worse than a dead rodent spoiled & reeking in a cage is when it's barfed up after partial digestion. Trust me...
Honestly my first "instinct" when that happened (many years back) was to try to stop the snake from swallowing it, but it was much too late. It wasn't a rat snake, btw, but this can happen with various kinds, and
it did happen to be a kind that typically feeds on lizards in the wild before "graduating" to rodents or mixed prey. And nothing bad came of it, & that snake took fresher f/t rodents from then on...it was something it
just had to learn I guess, & all we can do is let nature take it's course sometimes.