Alice the Bullsnake

I really get a kick out of Alice at feeding time. She shed this morning at 2AM and was overdue for a feeding since she was in shed. I got a couple of small rats out of the freezer and put them in the refrigerator to start thawing. After moving her into her feeding bin this afternoon, I presented her with her first small rat. She snatched it my fingers and threw a few coils over it to make sure it did not get away (????). As she is holding the rat in her jaws she lets out this nice long hiss. She almost always does this when she is fed. As I have stated before, Alice has never tried to bite me and I have had her since she was about 6 months old. I can only equate this hissing to her way of saying this is mine, now leave me alone to eat. On the second rat she just snatches it out of my fingers with any feedback.
She is curled up in one of her hides now digesting her dinner. Next week I will go back to feeding her the medium rats.

Usually, I get a heads up that Alice is about to go into a shed cycle by the darkening of her scales. Her yellows will get more olive and her oranges look more like a burnt orange. She looked that way when I had her out on Monday. I would expect her eyes to start bluing this week.

Alice has been super active this past few days. I fed her 2 small rats last Wednesday and she has been pretty active since Saturday. I had her out with me watching Little People, Big World tonight. She was really curious about everything and had a particular interest in the laundry Susan was folding. I will feed her again on Tuesday. Elachee Nature Center has a “Snake Day” event every year. This event is the most successful event they hold each year. It helps to teach people how important these wonderful reptiles are and is this coming Saturday. Guess you know where I will be 🙂

I bought a new Sterilite container to feed Alice in the other day. The thought was to find something smaller that I could simply place inside her habitat after I feed her and let her decide to come out of the feed bin and go into one of her hides when she was ready. It is working out very well. I have fed her twice using this method now and it is much faster and I do not have to be concerned about stress related regurgitation. The bin is about 19″x14″x7″ and has the locking handles on each end.

Alice has continued to do very well with the move to medium rats. The rat I thawed out for her on Monday was 115G. I put her in her new feeding bin and prepared the rat for her. When I removed the top and she immediately caught the scent. She grabbed the rat and started to throw some coils around it. I held onto it and twitched it around causing her to try harder to kill it. She gulped it down in what seemed like record time.

Also the Aspen shavings I had bought at Tractor Supply are working out very well. The larger chips help prevent some of her heavier hides from sinking down in them as much as they had been. She also seems to be able to burrow in this every bit as well as before.

Sure enough, after my last post Alice’s eyes started to turn blue. She has been staying in her new hide since then. The humidity in her habitat stays around 37% most of the time. Since her last few sheds have come off in more than one piece, I am misting her habitat a couple of times a day to raise the humidity to around 50% to see if she will have an easier shed this time.

I was getting ready for work the other day and noticed that Alice had pushed some aspen shavings into her water bowl. When I opened the top of her habitat and reached for the water bowl, she rattled her tail a little bit. She was stretched out and she feels vulnerable in that position. She never even drew her neck into an “S” shape. It is just a nervous reaction and passes quickly. As soon as I started to move her water bowl, she gets curious and wants to find out what is going on. She crawls over and starts to smell of the water bowl and my fingers and hand. She finally satisfies her curiosity enough to sniff around elsewhere and I am able to remove her bowl. As soon as I lift it out, Alice is in the opening where the bowl was sniffing around and burrowing into the aspen shavings. Once I have cleaned the bowl and am ready to put it back in, I cannot keep her out of the place for her water bowl. I would lift up the upper part of her body and move her towards the other end of her habitat. No sooner than I set her back down, she heads right back to where I moved her from. I ended up picking her up just so I could get her water bowl back where it belongs. This is another reason why it is a good idea to have a separate feeding area. I do not have to think about her biting me in a feeding response when I am working in her habitat.

Today is feeding day and it looks like she is on the leading edge of another shed cycle. Her general body color is darker, however her eyes still look clear. Most likely she will miss next Monday’s feeding.