On the last post I mentioned I would leave the two uneaten weanling rats in Alice’s habitat overnight to see if she would take them. Both of the rats were still there the next morning. I knew she was hungry and it seemed to stress her being offered the rats. With that in mind I had decided to go back to feeding her mice if she did not accept the weanling rat at the next feeding. I waited 5 days and tried again. I thawed out 1 large mouse and two weanling rats in the same bag. I offered her the weanling rat first and she completely ignored it. After a while I decided to go ahead and offer her a mouse. She went nuts as soon as she caught the scent of it and ended up striking and missing the mouse resulting in Alice landing on the chaise lounge outside the feeding bin. She was frantically smelling around for the mouse and I wanted her back in the feeding bin. I reached to raise her back into the bin and she opened her mouth and started towards my hand thinking it was the mouse. Well I quickly released her before she even got close to my hand. I then held the f/t mouse near her head where she quickly snapped it out of my grasp. Once she had swallowed the mouse and started searching around again, I lifted her back into the feeding bin without issue. I went ahead and thawed out the remaining two mice as it appeared the rats would again go uneaten. When she is really hungry she will hiss a little bit while she is eating. When I offered her the second mouse I could hear Alice hissing as she was swallowing it. Once the hissing stopped, I could see her moving around and knew she had finished that mouse. She did not seem to move around much before I heard her hissing again. I then wondered if she had decided to eat the rat. Once the hissing stopped, I waited a little while and offered her the last mouse I had. Once I opened the bin to feed her another mouse I could see that she had indeed eaten the rat. Awesome. Unfortunately, I had already tossed the second rat out into the woods as I was sure she was not going to touch them this week. She quickly ate the last mouse, again with some hissing in the process. This ended up being a lite feeding for her as it was probably around 90 grams total. I will continue to offer the rats for now but make sure I have enough large mice to provide a good feeding when she refuses them.
Petsmart has been having sales on reptile supplies on a regular basis. When I was in there recently, I picked up another driftwood that I wanted to attach to the floor of Alice’s habitat to provide her with a real piece of wood to climb to replace the artificial one I have had since she was much smaller. She now has two pieces of driftwood in her habitat and she just seems to love them. When she is out of her hides, she always seems to be either laying on or around one of the pieces of driftwood. I will get a picture later to post of the new decor.