Well, we attended our first reptile expo in Maryland. It was small (even I could tell that! *LOL*) But we had a really nice time and got to see a lot of great stuff up close and personal that we normally only get to read about and look at pictures of.
Another first for the day (slightly off topic for the forum, if you'll excuse me!) was that I held a tarantula for the first time. That was a big deal for me who has grown up with a moderately severe fear of spiders. (I'm working hard to get over it.)
And back on topic...we fed our new cape for the first time today. He'd been eating live up til now, but I bought some frozen fuzzies at the show and offered him two of them. (The lady I bought him from said he ate two of them last week.) Well...he ate one of them at least. I'm very glad of that. But after that, he didn't seem interested in the second. He nosed it around for a bit and then seemed to lose interest. I know it's probably hard work just getting one of those down, and maybe he just needed to rest, but I didn't have a good idea of how long it was safe to leave a dead mouse lying around before it would spoil. We waited about an hour, then put Caesar back in his home and cleaned up and disposed of the leftover mouse.
Questions: How long should I have left the mouse? Should I offer him another one sooner than next Saturday, since he only ate one? How long can a dead mouse hang around and still be good to eat?
Another question: How long does it take for a snake to defecate after eating? We brought him home last week, 24 hours after he'd eaten, and I have yet to find any feces in his cage. Our substrate is dark brown though, so maybe it'll be harder to spot? I sifted through it while he was in his feeding box and still didn't find anything.
Thanks for the help!
Judy
1.0 red cape gopher (Caesar)
I don't know how big your little Augustus is. You might just feed every three days instead, he'll probably eat that (most of my baby colubrids have till they're several months old).
