Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I thank all of you for your replies to my initial post.
Sadly, I have bad news. I placed a live mouse in the tank last nite with the Dumeril Boa before going to bed. I awoke this morning, and was horrified to see the mouse had ravenously attacked the Dumeril boa, and he had bite marks up and down his body.....

But the mouse was no where to be found, so I assumed the Dumeril ate the mouse. Wrong!!! The mouse was asleep hidden in the aspen bedding apparently.

I left today to attend the Hamburg, PA show, got home, and checked the Dumeril --- only to be shocked and horrified again!!
The mouse was quite alive, and had done even more damage to the Dumeril --- ripping off half of his skin up and down his entire body.....The Dumeril is still alive, but looks quite horrible following his ordeal!!!

All in an attempt to get this poor snake to eat. Never again!!!
I will not offer any more live prey to my snakes....
I don't quite how I'm going to get this Dumeril to eat, but I will not use live prey again...

If this Dumeril survives it will be a miracle....
so please pray this little guy pulls out of this.
I've treated his wounds, and hope he will survive.

Thanks to all.
ALAN

Alan, this is bad, but could have been prevented. Like I said you have to stand by and overlook the process when offering live food. This problem could happen with even a regular feeding animal. To leave live prey in with any animal and go to bed is BAD! So, you can't CURSE LIVE PREY into exile because of it, you just have to adjust your habits. There are many animals that offer keepers a hard time switching to frozen thawed prey, you just have to be careful in the meantime. I hope by all means that your dumerils heals. Please keep us posted.

I agree it could have been prevented. And there's no chance he could have eaten the mouse after it chew on him. Now you might have another problem, the dum will probably be afraid of live prey.

I have a small female dum that have problem eating. I offer live rat cause a mousse would easely attack the snake but the rat is not even weaned (bad english, sorry, I mean he's still drinking from it's mom) so even if I'm there watching, he's not as quick as an adult mouse to inflict damage. Also, you can put some cheese or something for mouse to eat so it can concentrate on something else then the snake. But still with all those trick, I'm alway there to watch, too much risk.

Good luck.
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www.hissnherps.ca
PYTHONS: 0.1 White-lipped 1.1 Borneo short-tailed 0.1 Red blood 1.0 Mollucan Scrub 1.0 Irian jaya carpet
BOAS: 1.1 Dumeril 1.1 Amazone tree 0.0.1 BCC
LÉZARDS: 0.0.1 Mangrove monitor 1.2 Bearded dragons

I'm so sorry to hear that Alan! I hope he pulls threw this for you. Like Paul said keep us updated.

If you want you can still try to use live prey if he is still not eating, just use unweaned rats, that way you don't have to worry about that happening again, they can't bite back. You can use young rat pups that are just as big if not bigger then most adult mice & alot less dangerous to the snake. Not just that they are loaded with fat, & should help an under weight snake put girth on alot faster.
Jason Reese.