Craziest feeding ever witnessed.

[ohyeahnow]

Monday's are feeding days for my snakes. When my BP Jake ate live, I have seen him strike from his hide, coming out of nowhere. Now I feed only F/T, and if he is in his hide I try and entice him to come out. I moved the mouse past his hide and he bit it, and stayed put. I thought he was not interested.

I warmed the mouse up a little more and moved it past his hide. Being night time I couldn't see where he was. Well I Heard a lot of movement but did not feel the strike, and did know if he was startled, bit the mouse again, or had wrapped it. So for about ten minutes or more the rear end of the mouse was hanging out of his hide hole. Convince he was not going to eat I left the room to sanitize my hands and feed my last snake for the night.

After feeding my milk snake I decided to go to the store which took about ten minutes. I got back at 9:48 to see Jake chewing on his tail, lifting the mouse up and wrapping again. He then went back to gnawing on the tail for about ten minutes. AT times he would wrap again and roll around the cage. Then go back to chewing on the tail. This went on for some time and I did not know if the tail movement was making him wrap again. The heat light goes out and I lie still hoping it will come back on.

When the light comes back on he is still messing with the tail? Light goes out after some time. When it comes back on the fool has swallowed the tail and both of the mouse legs are pointed in opposite directions. Now I kept thinking he would release and find the head. I have seen snakes swallow from behind on rare occasions, but the usually they at least start with one leg/hindquarter. So the more Jake tries to swallow the wider the legs spread. He keeps thrashing around recoiling it was nuts. By the time he finished thrashing He had thrashed about from his warm hide all the way across the cage to his hot hide.

Long story short it was after 10:50 before he finally consumed the mouse. Mind you this is the same size mouse (as big as Jake's girth) he normally eats, just never from behind. The craziest part was watching him gnawing on the tail and thrashing about, recoiling, gnawing more, a vicious cycle. It looked more like a wrestling match between snake and dead mouse.

Never a dull moment with snakes LOL.

[TheShortBus]

ha crazy read :p. all my snakes always tend to find the head, but my 9 year old male takes them from behind all the time i actually started feeding him two small rats so the legs woldnt get in the way. hes not the smartest of the bunch.. he got out of his tub once and i finally found him in the back of my toilet that was open because i was fixing the flusher..

[HaleBug]

aaahahaha my boy is currently going at his rat from the front shoulder. He fails EVERY time and tries to go at his food from the side. Takes him over an hour to get it right. I chalk it up to having a slightly retarded snake.

[Smith285]

aaahahaha my boy is currently going at his rat from the front shoulder. He fails EVERY time and tries to go at his food from the side. Takes him over an hour to get it right. I chalk it up to having a slightly retarded snake.

haha mine does the same thing sometimes. It's funny watching him try to figure out why he can't get his mouth around it

[wilwarin712]

Yeah, i just fed my girl for the first time on monday, and she went right for the side. But then she turned it, and started swallowing it hip first. Thankfully the tail laid flat against the snake's side while she tried to swallow it, cuz I heard that they can sometimes choke on the tail so I was a little worried about that. It was definitely amusing to see, though.

[anendeloflorien]

I heard that they can sometimes choke on the tail so I was a little worried about that.

There shouldn't be any problem with them choking on a tail. If you look closely at a snakes mouth they have a small tube on the bottom of their mouth that they use to breath when they're swallowing their prey.

I've seen some pretty funny ways of eating a mouse or rat before though. When I got my first ball python either the first or second feeding she took the mouse from the side and basically folded it in half getting it into her mouth lol. So looking at her you could see the tail on one side and the mouses head on the other . It was pretty funny to see.

[scales owner]

aaahahaha my boy is currently going at his rat from the front shoulder. He fails EVERY time and tries to go at his food from the side. Takes him over an hour to get it right. I chalk it up to having a slightly retarded snake.

AH to funny.

[python baller]

too bad you couldn't grab a camera and get a vid of it. that is pretty strange sounding.

[wilwarin712]

There shouldn't be any problem with them choking on a tail. If you look closely at a snakes mouth they have a small tube on the bottom of their mouth that they use to breath when they're swallowing their prey.

Ok. See, someone in another thread said their snake had died from choking on the rat's tail and that kinda freaked me out. Sorry. Lol. Thanks for setting it straight though