Alice the Bullsnake

Last week I tried feeding Alice a large rat instead of the two medium rats. She refused the large rat. I did not stay and watch, so I do not even know if she showed any real interest in it. I waited a week and offered her the two medium rats tonight which she gulped down without issue. She is certainly big enough to easily handle a large rat so I will try again some other time when I can watch her reaction to it.

I had a few smaller medium rats and decided to see if Alice would take a couple of them for today’s feeding. She is gentle in taking her food and just crawls over to it and tugs it around until she can get the head in the right position. She took the second rat without any delay. Total meal size was over 170g.

Also, I plan to have Alice in her first public event on September the 7th. Our local Birdwatcher Supply has invited us up for the hummingbird banding event they have each year. It’s just a 2 1/2 hour event, so that will be a good test for her. This should provide a good environment to share the truth about snakes and their behavior.

Recent issues with the home server this site was on forced a quick move to a new server early this morning. I am still working on the site as the feeding history is not working at this point. The plan is for the site to be fully functional by the end of the day. Thanks, Jim.

I collected a fecal sample from Alice yesterday evening and drove it over to the vets office today for testing. Later today, I offered Alice a medium rat which she accepted. Hopefully she is back to her normal self and will resume a regular feeding schedule. I should have the results back later this week on the fecal exam. Right now she is curled up in a hide digesting her meal.

I never reported back on the stuck shed on her nose a few months ago. I was able to remove it on the next attempt. Again, I used the a damp towel on the bottom of a plastic tub, placed her on top of it and another damp towel on top of her and waited 30 minutes.The stuck shed basically popped off as I was trying to lift one side of it.

Alice has been refusing food for the past couple of months. She has been very active, apparently looking for a nesting place and searching for a mate. As a result she has been refusing food the past 7 weeks. Tonight, she started to eat the rat I offered her and then spit it back out. In frustration I gave her a large mouse; Something I had planned to never let her eat again. She ate the large mouse and left the medium rat 🙁

Her weight has held up well and her last checkup was great. Hopefully, I will be able to get a stool sample from the mouse she ate so I can have it tested.

Alice had a good checkup at the vet yesterday. We will still do another fecal floatation when she defecates at a time that I can get it back to the vet. She also still has a small piece of stuck shed on her nose. Spent about 1.5 hours keeping her in a tub between damp towels and taking her out every 30 minutes to see if the shed had loosened. Only a small piece of it would lift off her nose. I will try again another day. Since she is due to feed I did not want to continue stressing her after the vet visit.

I noticed that all the videos were no longer showing up this morning. I found another way to display the videos and all of them are working again. This was probably broken for a while before I caught it 🙁

Sometimes, raising the humidity is not enough to help a snake shed cleanly. Since Alice has reached adulthood, she usually ends up with a little piece of shed on her nose or lips. When I got home yesterday, I found out she had shed during the day and had a bit of stuck shed on her nose and lower lip. After trying to remove it by wiping it with a damp towel, I could see it was going to take a bit more to get the shed off. This morning, I put her in a damp pillowcase for about an hour. Checked back in on her and all the shed was now off without any additional stress to her. Win, win. We are both happier.