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I have a situation on my hands and I need serious help...

Almost two weeks ago, I gave my corn his usual two adult mice. Yes, they were live, and yes, i know i shouldn't and I'll comment on this further down.

He always eats them both....until this past week. He ate the one and left the other to wander around my corn's "house". My relatives felt bad for the mouse and started feeding it behind my back (i was wondering why he hadn't starved by the third day or so). After they told me, i really didn't mind because i figured that the snake would have to get hungry eventually and eat it.

On top of that, the mouse has taken over his house. He doesn't hide in his usual hide boxes anymore. Instead he's usually curled up against the front of the tank.

Well, it's been about 11 days now and he still hasn't eaten it. What should i do? Do we keep the mouse alive until he eats it? Do we starve it? Give it back to the pet store? I'm stumped and the mouse is making a mess of the housing.

This brings me to my other question - after eating live food for a year, how receptive do you think he'll be to prekilled? He's a little over a year old now. I don't want another situation like this again. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

First, take the mouse out of there immediately. Second, never leave your snake alone with a live mouse. There are many cases where a person left a live mouse/rat in with a snake, and the mouse attacked the snake. Mouse bites and scratches could cause scarring, infection, etc, etc. Just please take it out of there, and please don't do that anymore. Your snake could get hurt or killed.

That said, as long as you don't starve it, it doesn't much matter what you do with the mouse when you get it out. Keep it as a pet, keep it until the next feeding time, give it back to the pet store - whatever. But don't starve it. That's just cruel. Well, not JUST cruel, it's also unethical or immoral or whatever you want to call it. If you can't decide, keep it 'til next feeding. It'll save you a dollar or two.

Also, on the subject of switching to frozen/thawed, I suggest you look at this link - http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document&issn=0018-0831&volume=058&issue=04&page=0429

The basic point of it is that wild snakes probably scavenge more often than we think they do. So, it probably shouldn't be that hard. If worse comes to worst, you could just not offer it anything alive, and eventually it would eat. You might have to buy one of two live mice in the future just to keep your snake from losing weight, but it shouldn't be that hard to convert it to frozen/thawed.

I realize that probably no one told you that the mouse could hurt your snake, and intuitively it seems kind of dumb to say this little mouse could hurt this big snake whose job is to eat the mouse, but it does happen and the results are sometimes nasty. That's one of many reasons lots of people feed frozen/thawed or freshly killed. The reason I don't suggest killing the mouse and giving it to the snake that way is that right now the snake is probably stressed from the mouse's presence, and doesn't want to eat. That's probably why it hasn't killed it yet.

Thank You sooooo much! I'll put the mouse in a seperate container until the next feeding and see what happens. I certainly won't starve him then.

In the meantime i'll do some research on frozen/thawed food for him. Thank you again for your help

Unbelievable. Just when you thought you've heard it all....

Spook - sadly this is not an uncommon occurance. It happens more than anybody would care to imagine. I have a friend who has a ball python, and I found out that he had a small adult rat living with the damn snake for a month! Named the rat rambo. He was asking why the snake wouldn't eat.

There's a fine line between ignorance and cruelty. Ignorance would be an example of the initial poster here... he didn't know he was doing wrong. Discovered he was, so he fixed the problem. Cruelty would be my friend, who had attempted to keep the rat living with the python once I told him not to. (he made hte mistake of using the bathroom while I was over there, in doing so i removed the rat, hit its head on the table and i'm actually suprised the snake would eat it fresh killed right off the bat.)

Some things you may want to consider trying are to feed it a live followed right up by a f/t. Also, since you are saying that you feed 2 full grown mice, you may want to consider moving up to rats. They will give your snake a higher calcium amount, and it seems to be the more commonly fed prey. All mine are feeding on one size or another of rats, except the one whose too small for a rat pink.

If you want to, send me an email (click on my name to do this) and i'll email you back a couple pictures that have been circulating around for a while about when a rat does fight back. too controversial to post here.
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-Chris

0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat
1.0 Black Rat
0.1 Vietnamese Blue Beauty
1.0 Green Tree Python
0.1 Texas Bairds Rat

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