Rachel, there's a syndrome Dave and Tracy Barker talk about in their book "Ball Pythons - The History, Natural History, Care and Breeding" that they call LONHS - Lights-are-on-but-nobody's-home. An amazing book btw and well worth purchasing.

Anyways, they describe this as a syndrome where the snake is there but not there. So stressed out it is really not engaged in it's life, uncaring of what is happening around it and usually unwilling to feed. It's often seen in wild caught adults and is a result they say of stress and shock.

We've personally witnessed this in two adults we rehabbed and it's a long, slow process to bring them back. Blessedly, with a lot of help from experienced people here, we were able to accomplish this and now have two lovely adult females that are continuing to learn to accept captivity.

I can tell you the first time one of them hissed at me - after a long time of her just existing coiled up in a terrified ball - I was so thrilled I posted about it here! Saoirse finally cared enough about life to give me attitude! It was one of those moments of snake keeping that I will always treasure. Saoirse's never looked back either, she's still a challenge sometimes but she's coming along and triumphing over what was done to her.

Sometimes hissing is a very precious thing.