Adelita - 2019 Hypo Sonoran

[Bogertophis]

... She found it eventually, but when she did, she just parked herself right next to it and gave me an offended look! "Excuse me, Mother, but why is my mouse lukewarm and sitting on the ground? Reheat it and give it to me on the tongs, please!" ...

For all the talk about how snakes have such a good sense of smell, they do seem to get a bit lazy, don't they? Maybe our pets just aren't hungry enough, like they'd be on their own in the wild?

[WrongPython]

For all the talk about how snakes have such a good sense of smell, they do seem to get a bit lazy, don't they? Maybe our pets just aren't hungry enough, like they'd be on their own in the wild?

Heh, she's certainly been acting hungry enough! She's been leaning and pushing on her door since I fed Kuzco back on the 9th, with only a few days of respite earlier this week before a passing weather system keyed her up again.

I think Adelita's a little more keyed into her food's heat signature and movement than its scent when she's asked to actively hunt. Her sense of smell certainly seems pretty strong - she seems to be able to tell when I have snake food thawing in the kitchen, and she'll go into ambush position when I bring the bucket of food over to the snake cages. If I don't offer the prey straight to her in that initial ambush spot - in which case it's normally taken immediately - she needs to see a lot of movement and a warm prey item for her to come out and take it. When she does strike, she strikes hard and constricts the heck out of her food for quite some time. She definitely strikes me (thankfully not literally) as more of an ambush hunter and a snake that would prefer live prey if given the choice.