A little substrate will be fine 99.9999 percent of the time.

When I first started keeping snakes as a kid I was always worried about it and had tweezers on standby for every feeding to try and pluck out even the most tiny piece of aspen. After a while I became more educated and had a little more faith in these animals' ability to survive.

In the wild they are going to ingest dirt, grass, sticks, sand, etc on a regular basis. While large amounts are obviously bad, if the snake couldn't survive a little wood chip, there would be no more snakes.

It's great that you are concerned for the well being of your animal though, keep it up.

Also, don't sweat a king being a weird eater or even refusing food all together in the winter, just something a lot do. As long as his needs are met and you provide appropriate shelter, temp, and humidity options kings are worry free.

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