When we first got our ball about 5 months ago, she was in rough shape. (Thanks, petco!) Her eyes were dented, she was clearly dehydrated and stressed out, and of course, she wouldn't eat. After awhile in her new habitat with perfect temps, humidity, hiding places, and water availability, she perked up and became a pretty sweet girl. She's a fantastic eater, though with a quirk, and that's why I'm writing this post. This is the story of the Ball that thinks she's arboreal.

When we set up her habitat, amongst her hiding places and water dish, we put in a fake, decorative tree. It looks a bit like this: http://www.petco.com/product/9610/Kr...-Branches.aspx. I'd say that at it's tallest point, it's about 8 inches from the floor of the cage.

Winston loves this tree. She spends much of her time in her hide, of course, but if she's out and about, she's in this tree. She drinks by hanging down from the tree. Most interestingly, she strikes at her prey, as well as eats the rodent, from the tree. Right now, this moment, she's working a mouse down her throat from the tree. Yeah... the whole feeding process is always from the tree.

She's a happy, healthy snake, and her environment is 100% on target for temperature on both sides of the cage, humidity, and everything else you can imagine. We went a little overboard with the habitat and spent far more than was necessary, however the end result is as close to a perfect set up as possible. I really have no reason to believe that she's not using the (ample) floor space of her habitat for eating because of some husbandry issue.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? How common is it?

Other quirks: She enjoys climbing up the rocky wall on the back of her terrarium and flinging herself into her water dish, over and over again. Climb, climb, climb climb, SPLASH, climb climb climb, SPLASH. Silly girl.

-She likes to nip at me. I am 7 months pregnant. She never nips at her co-owner, my boyfriend. Do pregnancy hormones make Balls a bit more aggressive and/or make them think I am food? She definitely prefers him. She taps the glass closest to him when he's peeking in at her.