Ah, okay. I never really wiggled f/t rats to entice my pickier eaters. I always just tossed them in a circular container with the rat against the wall, and 99% of the time, when I'd go check in 15 minutes, the rat would be gone.

Although now that I'm thinking about it, maybe that's more of a retic thing than a ball python thing. Obviously encouraging a retic to strike moving objects is a bad idea, so that was a safer way to transfer him to f/t when he was little.

It always worked for my ball pythons, though. And there's a breeder on YouTube who does the same thing with her colubrids and it works for them, too. I guess I assumed that's just how most breeders did it.