Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi to everyone here... I've gotten a lot of good information off of this site, so hopefully someone here can tell me how worried I should be.

I've had my ball python for about three years now, and he only eats live mice. I fed him tonight -- I dangle the mouse by the tail until he strikes at it and starts constricting; I've always assumed he would be safe that way. However, about two weeks ago I left the room too soon and apparently he got bitten, because there were bite marks under his chin. I had a look and they didn't seem very deep and they weren't bleeding, so I didn't think anything more of it. He went into shed after that, so he didn't eat last week -- it isn't unusual for him to refuse food during shed, so again I thought nothing of it. However, tonight I fed him and waited until I was sure he had a good grip on the mouse, and something else attracted my attention... when I looked back in the cage, he was coiled in a large circle, with the mouse sitting in the middle, shaking.

What's really worrying me is that right after that he started acting very agitated, sliding up the walls of his tank. And he's making some odd sounds -- wheezing and squeaking, with his mouth open. I know it could be a respiratory tract infection, but it strikes me as being odd that I've heard no noise from him before (ever before) tonight and I'm almost always in the room with him. He doesn't appear to have been bitten by this mouse, there's no blood -- I can't get him to open his mouth for me and since he's so agitated I don't want to risk hurting him, so I can't see if maybe he was scratched or bitten inside his mouth. I would assume that if he had been I could see at least some blood around his lips but there is none. As I'm typing this, he hasn't made any noise for about 15 minutes, so hopefully he was just distressed at losing the mouse, or maybe the bites from last time bothered him when he tried to feed.

I'm sorry, I know I sound like an idiot but up until this point I've had no trouble with him, so I don't know how to deal with this. Could someone please give me an idea as to what's happening here?

Your detailed message shows you really care about him/her. So i suggest you take him to the vet. I have a ball that whizzes and it freaked me out. I took him to the vet and everything was okay. Rodents can carry some nasty diseases, especially live ones(remember the plague?).

Anyway those are my thoughts...sym
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"You can't appreciate Shakespeare until you've read him in the original Klingon."

try feeding frozen rats or freshly killed. if you dont want to thaw the frozen rats you have to kill then yourself. just grab it by the tail and smack its head on a table, or put it in a bag and swing it at the floor. it seems cruel but its alot less painful for both the mouse and the snake. im sure everyone will agree that prekilled or frozen/thawed is the way to go.

Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have cleared itself up. I'm thinking he was just agitated from losing his grip on the mouse. There's been no noise from him at all, which is good! If anything else happens he goes straight to the vet, but he fed normally today so I'm going to wait and see.