We aren't sure how old the pastel is. We got him from a "friend" who uhh....well....to be perfectly honest seems like he's a few fries short of a happy meal. He was what you would call a collector (he had 10 snakes in his little trailer! and he didn't make that much $) and didn't really take care of them very well. He fed them and stuff, but he would go weeks without cleaning the cages. It was gross. He ended up letting us have them because of some personal issues and he couldn't keep them anymore. So I said all that to say that he didn't know what the heck he was doing so there's not much he knew about the pastel. We were told by the guy who sold it to him that it is a graziani, but who knows if he was telling the truth. I do know it is of breeding age and size as it has locked up with our normal female MANY MANY times. (she's our BIG BIG girl) So anyway, he's big enough for small rats and that's what we were trying to feed him. When he wouldn't eat it live, we...uhhh...ahem...killed it and tried offering it to him that way. When my hubby killed it, it bled out through an ear, and he STILL wouldn't eat it. I've had success before using the "force-feed" method on reluctant feeders - you know, when you force open the mouth and basically shove the mouse or rat in the mouth. He had responded to that in the past with a mouse, so I tried it with the dead rat and nothing doing. So I'm kind of at my wit's end here. Buying 3 live mice is more expensive than buying 1 small live rat. Oh well. I'll try being persistent and see what happens. If he's picky then he's just gonna be picky and I can live with that. Thanks everyone!