About a couple of weeks ago Alice refused a meal. She struck at it a time or two and then pretty much ignored it. I did get her to eat a few days later, however it was after a couple of false starts in swallowing the rat. The next time I went to feed her, again there was the hesitation and then she swallowed the rat up to its shoulders and spit it out.
After consulting with the vet., I decided to give it another try and if she did the same thing, I would take her into the vet to get checked out to see what is going on. So, four days passed after the last attempt and I decided to try giving her a large mouse first and then follow that with a medium rat. She immediately snapped the mouse up and gulped it down. A 19g mouse is nothing for a close to 6 foot Bull Snake to eat and it was gone in a flash. I allowed her to settle down for about 30 minutes and presented the rat to her. She carefully smelled of the rat and finally struck at it once and knocked it out of my hands. She pinned it against the side of the feeding bin and I patiently waited to see if she would swallow it. After several nerve racking minutes, I could see her head moving around in the feeding bin. A cautious glance revealed that the rat was indeed missing from view.
So, I thought for a while what might have caused this sudden wariness when getting offered a rat. She has always had pre-killed, frozen rodents as her source of food and never could have suffered an injury from a prey item. Then it occurred to me that it had to be related to how I presented the rat to her. I always hold them by the tail and hold it near her head where she can smell it and she grabs it out of my hand. The last time I fed her, before all of this started, she had partially come out of her bin to grab the rat and I used the tail of the rat to pull her upper body back into the feeding bin. Maybe it just coincidence, however I think that had something to do with this behavior.
For the next few feedings, I will offer her the large mouse first to get her into feeding mode and follow up with the medium rat. I hope this gets her past her wariness and she returns to her normal, aggressive feeding response.