Alice is doing well and eating her rats on a regular basis. I still have to scent them with mouse, however I know I will be able to work her off that sometime in the future. There have not been much in the way of updates recently to keep the site interesting and I apologize for that. My plans are to start writing an article at least once a month covering captive snake care. Maybe I can come up with a decent idea for one this week.
Alice shed last night. She had one piece stuck on her nose that I ended up helping her with. She had been trying for a while to get it off and that was making her a bit frantic. The moment I removed it from her nose she relaxed. She then slowly crawled out of my hands back into her habitat to rest.
Alice ate two mouse scented small rats today. I can see a ting of blue in her eyes, so I guess it is going to be a little quiet for a week or so. She is doing well and made a quick meal of both rats. One of the problems I noticed when she was trying to eat rat weanlings is that she would try to swallow them without lining them up correctly first. Then when she could not swallow it, she would spit it out. Of course when she tried that with large mice, it would just fold together make it easy to swallow. The larger prey items seem to prevent her from even trying that and she swallows the small rats without issue. At least that is my observation. YMMV 
Just a couple of new pictures showing Alice peaking out of her feeding bin and one of her current habitat setup before she demolishes it.
Ssuuuuup
From the November 25th feeding on I have been offering Alice nothing but rats scented with a mouse. She has been eating them, although she has definitely been eating less than if I were feeding her mice. Tonight I decided to try a small rat first since she usually eats the first one only. She ate the small rat and I offered her a weanling that I had thawed out in case she refused the small rat. She started to swallow that one and could not get it lined up correctly. She ended up spitting it back out twice. I am leaving her alone for a while in hopes she will try again successfully.
Alice ate one brown weanling rat today that had been scented with a mouse. I dragged the mouse around near her head to get her interested. Once she started to smell around looking for the mouse, I closed up her habitat with the scented rat inside. I offered her a second scented weanling rat that she did not eat. She is curled up in her hide now and seems content.
On the last post I mentioned I would leave the two uneaten weanling rats in Alice’s habitat overnight to see if she would take them. Both of the rats were still there the next morning. I knew she was hungry and it seemed to stress her being offered the rats. With that in mind I had decided to go back to feeding her mice if she did not accept the weanling rat at the next feeding. I waited 5 days and tried again. I thawed out 1 large mouse and two weanling rats in the same bag. I offered her the weanling rat first and she completely ignored it. After a while I decided to go ahead and offer her a mouse. She went nuts as soon as she caught the scent of it and ended up striking and missing the mouse resulting in Alice landing on the chaise lounge outside the feeding bin. She was frantically smelling around for the mouse and I wanted her back in the feeding bin. I reached to raise her back into the bin and she opened her mouth and started towards my hand thinking it was the mouse. Well I quickly released her before she even got close to my hand. I then held the f/t mouse near her head where she quickly snapped it out of my grasp. Once she had swallowed the mouse and started searching around again, I lifted her back into the feeding bin without issue. I went ahead and thawed out the remaining two mice as it appeared the rats would again go uneaten. When she is really hungry she will hiss a little bit while she is eating. When I offered her the second mouse I could hear Alice hissing as she was swallowing it. Once the hissing stopped, I could see her moving around and knew she had finished that mouse. She did not seem to move around much before I heard her hissing again. I then wondered if she had decided to eat the rat. Once the hissing stopped, I waited a little while and offered her the last mouse I had. Once I opened the bin to feed her another mouse I could see that she had indeed eaten the rat. Awesome. Unfortunately, I had already tossed the second rat out into the woods as I was sure she was not going to touch them this week. She quickly ate the last mouse, again with some hissing in the process. This ended up being a lite feeding for her as it was probably around 90 grams total. I will continue to offer the rats for now but make sure I have enough large mice to provide a good feeding when she refuses them.
Petsmart has been having sales on reptile supplies on a regular basis. When I was in there recently, I picked up another driftwood that I wanted to attach to the floor of Alice’s habitat to provide her with a real piece of wood to climb to replace the artificial one I have had since she was much smaller. She now has two pieces of driftwood in her habitat and she just seems to love them. When she is out of her hides, she always seems to be either laying on or around one of the pieces of driftwood. I will get a picture later to post of the new decor.
Another semi-successful try to get Alice back on rats. I defrosted two rat weanlings in a bag with a large mouse. I did not rub the scent of the mouse directly on the any of the rats. I offered her the first rat and she eventully ate it. I gave her a second one that she started to swallow and spit it out. Thinking she had actually eat the second rat, I offered her a third rat weanling. I could see her biting at it however she never started to swallow it. Al least she ate one rat this week. She last ate one weanling rat and a large mouse two weeks ago. Right now she still appears to be hunting and I will leave the two weanling rats in her habitat tonight to see will take anything else.
The last time Alice ate, she had a weanling rat after a large mouse. I tried to feed her today and she just did not seem that interested in a weanling rat. She was offered both white and brown ones to see if a dark color would spark something. Maybe she will be more interested in them this coming weekend.
