Humidity would be my main concern for you. A baby short tail needs alot of humidity which is hard to accomplish in a 40 g tank. I dont know if you are having problems with this or not, but something to check into. Your blood seems like it is intrested in the live food. I havent assosciated the heavy breathing with intimidation, it seems more like excitement to me. Whenever I feed my short tail he starts breathing heavy and wags his tail. Im not sure if I understand your post correctly or not. Are you actually tring to feed him out of the cage or just putting the food next to it to see if it is intrested? If not you might want to try actually putting the food in the cage, some snakes like to eat at night too. One thing I would look out for if you are feeding in cage is substrate as well. I used to use bark chips and I found if I fed in cage my snake would scoop them in his mouth while trying to strike, so I started feeding out of cage.
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"It's my snake, I trained it, so I'm going to eat it!" - Mad Max, The Road Warrior

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