Last weekend I took a few pictures to show how much Alice has grown in one year. When I bought her at the Atlanta Repticon on January 10,2009 she was curled up in the container pictured below.
I did not measure her then, however I would estimate she was around 2 feet long. One year later she measures over 4 feet and has outgrown 4 of her hides.
I am currently keeping an eye out for signs of an upcoming shed.
I had removed Alice’s water bowl to clean it. Upon returning with the clean bowl I found that she had tunneled into the opening. Below is the full view.
I gave up waiting on her and ended up putting the water back in that evening.
I started to weigh the meals as soon as I moved Alice up to rats. The small rats she has been eating have all been between 50 and 55 grams. Today’s topped the scales at 65 grams. Diameter wise, it right at about the same as her widest part. It did take her a little longer to get this one down. Right now she is still cruising around in her feeding bin sniffing for anything else. I still want to get a picture of her next to the bowl I carried her home in. I should be able to get that this coming Sunday.
Almost one year ago I bought Alice at the Atlanta Repticon Event on January 10, 2009. She has doubled her length in that time. She has also moved from eating one small frozen mouse a week to one small frozen rat a week. Even with the limited handling I am able to give her due to my work schedule, she has become pretty calm and has never bitten me. I still get a short little hiss (do not even see her mouth open) or brief tail rattle every now and then and just ignore them and handle her calmly and don’t make fast moves when holding her. As she has grown, she has also become more comfortable during her feeding time. She used to immediately hide when I put her in her feeding bin waiting for her dinner. Now she will crawl up the side of the bin to sniff my hand to see if I have anything else for her after I have already fed her. I was actually pretty surprised when she did that last week after I fed her. Once she had carefully sniffed each one of my fingers and the side of my hand, she lowered herself back down inside the feeding bin and eventually crawled inside her blue power supply box so I could put her back in her habitat. Very cool.
I fed Alice her first rat today. It was one of the small rats mentioned earlier. The rat weighed 55g and I can actually see a lump in her body. She did not dive on it as fast as she had the mice. Looking back, knowing how large a Bull Snake can get, I should have been feeding her rats all along. Some people have reported having trouble moving a snake up to a larger prey item once the snake gets used to eating mice. I am glad I am not going to get stuck with having to feed her four or five mice every week once she gets larger 😀
Alice drying out after her shed
By 12:30 this afternoon, Alice had already completed her shed. The shed that was exposed to the heat lamp was already dry. I took this picture of her laying under the heat lamp on the warm side of her habitat right after I removed it.
Alice poked her head out of the blue box for the first time since she began her shed cycle. Her eyes are still a little cloudy and she did not even notice me watching her. She extended her body out only far enough to sniff around until she found her water bowl. Even then she had a hard time judging how far to lower her head to drink. During this short excursion, she must have stretched her jaws four times. There is a bit of discussion on the net about “do snakes yawn”. I tend to believe they do.
This time it really does look like Alice is getting ready to shed. I thought I caught a blue tinge in her eyes a couple of days ago when I saw her out and about. She is curled up in her lovely, blue power supply box and I can see her side at the opening. Her scales are very dull and even seem to have a grayish coloration. Look like no feeding this Tuesday.
I went by Petsmart to see if they had any small frozen rats. A box of two small frozen rats was $10.99. If Alice does well with that I can make the bulk frozen order and have the large mice for fillers once she gets a little larger.
I just fed Alice two large mice again tonight. I have been looking at moving her up to one small or medium rat for a few weeks now. I feel like she is overdue for the change based on activity levels and the diameter of her body. Checking on the size information at rodentpro.com, a small rat would be just a little larger in meal size than the two large mice. Hopefully, Petsmart will have some small frozen rats so I can try it our before making a larger order at rodentpro.com.
I thought Alice was getting ready to shed. She was right at six weeks since the last shed. She had also been hiding since she was fed last Tuesday. When I got home from running errands today I went in the office to she what she was up to. She was out and about and did not look like she was searching for something rough to rub against. I decided to go ahead and feed her since she was acting hungry.
I held her for a little while before I placed her in the feeding bin. I thawed out her usual two large mice. The sides of her feeding bin are an opaque white and provide her with more security while I am working around her in the office after feeding time. On the downside, it makes it hard for me to tell where her head is when I open the bin. I had everything ready to go. The lid was loose and the mouse was completely thawed, a little warm and held securely in the tongs. When I could tell her head was on the other end of the bin, I opened the feeding end to put the mouse in where Alice would see it. She apparently saw the mouse as soon as I opened the lid. As I was lowering the mouse, she launched herself across the feeding bin at the mouse. She missed the mouse and landed halfway outside the feeding bin.
Now I have an issue. I have a hungry four foot long Bull Snake with half of her body hanging over the side of the bin and the hands that I would usually handle her with now smell like mouse from handling the dead rodent. She is tense, however she is not frantic at this point. That is good. She smells of the tongs that I am holding an looks back towards the feeding bin. I take my forearm (free of mouse aroma) and lift her back up into her feeding bin. At this point she has not seen the mouse laying on the floor of it. As I start to close the lid, she lets out a nice, long hiss. Kind of like saying “I am hungry, I want my dinner and I want to eat in peace”. Like a good waiter I comply with her request and bring her the second mouse about forty-five minutes after she ingests the first one. For some odd reason, I am much quicker in placing the second mouse inside for her 😉