So this weekend when I fed my bairds I decided to leave the FT mouse in the tank for him to find on his own instead of just handing it to him...after a fairly long search--involving a certain amount of bashing into the cage furniture in his excitement--he finally located the mouse, but he was behind it, at the tail end. I expected to see him tongue flick and chin rub his way to the head and start to swallow, but instead he reared up in the air, looped way over the top of the mouse, and descended toward the head in a series of rhythmic bounces (as in: Pay no attention to me, I'm just a branch blowing in the wind)...when he got within about a half inch of the mouse, he struck and grabbed it by the head...apparently finally realized it was dead, and swallowed it without constriction...I have seen the branch in the wind routine on TV before, but always involving arboreal snakes, never terrestrial...has anyone seen this behavior in rat snakes? I seem to remember reading somewhere about the blowing branch method being used in lizard hunting, but I can't remember where and could be wrong...
SR
