Alice revealed her new scales on Tuesday. She ended up with a bit of stuck shed on her nose this time. I was able to remove the last part easily by misting her followed by using a wet hand towel to soften the stuck shed until I was able to gently lift it off.
I will let her rest today and will offer her a meal tomorrow.
Alice’s last shed was a bit difficult for her and ended up with some stuck shed that she needed help with. If you live in an area where you have to heat your home in the winter, you are likely to have low humidity in the house. Alice’s was hovering in the mid 20% range during her last shed. I had increased the humidity some, however it was apparently not enough. I have reduced the ventilation and added a tray of damp sphagnum moss. The humidity this time is staying in the 40% to 50% range. She last shed December 28th of last year.
Her eyes are still blue at this point and she is on the warm side this morning.
I finally have Alice back on medium rats. I was away this week to help Southeastern Reptile Rescue with an event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After refusing the last meal right before I left, she decided she was hungry about half-way through the week, reported my wife. Upon returning, I decided this was likely my best chance to get her back on unscented rats and hoped she would take a medium one. She was laying on the warm side resting when I opened up her habitat. I had the rat on a paper plate as usual and picked it up to wave it around a bit to get the scent stired up a bit. After putting the rat back on the plate, I placed the it on the warm side behind her and covered the front of her habitat with a beach towel for security. About an hour later I returned to find the rat gone and Alice curled up in one of her hides. This has been a long battle, however it was in her best interest to keep working at it.
Alice is doing well and eating her rats on a regular basis. I still have to scent them with mouse, however I know I will be able to work her off that sometime in the future. There have not been much in the way of updates recently to keep the site interesting and I apologize for that. My plans are to start writing an article at least once a month covering captive snake care. Maybe I can come up with a decent idea for one this week.
Alice shed last night. She had one piece stuck on her nose that I ended up helping her with. She had been trying for a while to get it off and that was making her a bit frantic. The moment I removed it from her nose she relaxed. She then slowly crawled out of my hands back into her habitat to rest.
Alice ate two mouse scented small rats today. I can see a ting of blue in her eyes, so I guess it is going to be a little quiet for a week or so. She is doing well and made a quick meal of both rats. One of the problems I noticed when she was trying to eat rat weanlings is that she would try to swallow them without lining them up correctly first. Then when she could not swallow it, she would spit it out. Of course when she tried that with large mice, it would just fold together make it easy to swallow. The larger prey items seem to prevent her from even trying that and she swallows the small rats without issue. At least that is my observation. YMMV 🙂
Just a couple of new pictures showing Alice peaking out of her feeding bin and one of her current habitat setup before she demolishes it.
Ssuuuuup
From the November 25th feeding on I have been offering Alice nothing but rats scented with a mouse. She has been eating them, although she has definitely been eating less than if I were feeding her mice. Tonight I decided to try a small rat first since she usually eats the first one only. She ate the small rat and I offered her a weanling that I had thawed out in case she refused the small rat. She started to swallow that one and could not get it lined up correctly. She ended up spitting it back out twice. I am leaving her alone for a while in hopes she will try again successfully.
Alice ate one brown weanling rat today that had been scented with a mouse. I dragged the mouse around near her head to get her interested. Once she started to smell around looking for the mouse, I closed up her habitat with the scented rat inside. I offered her a second scented weanling rat that she did not eat. She is curled up in her hide now and seems content.
