HELP! Inconvenient eater!

[Nafun]

Long story short.... Mister Slithers got out at feeding time, and ended up eating his prey on my desk. Normally he's fed in his feed box, and I leave him there a few hours, but I can't leave him on my desk for a few hours. How do I get him back in his cage without regurgitating?

[infernalis]

Carefully and calmly, should not be a problem.

They only regurgitate when upset or sick.

[Nafun]

Ok, I got him back in. I didn't have a choice, he started making a break for it over the edge of the table.

He's retreated to one of his hides and is digesting.

As for how I got into this predicament....

He's been off his feed. I've been trying to get him switched over to gerbils or small rats for about a month, and he has been refusing them, then two weeks ago he started to refuse mice too. Today I got a nice small, brown rat for him, but before killing it, I wanted to give him a smell to see if he was interested....

He was interested. He immediately struck at the rat, which surprised the heck out of me since he has only once before fed aggressively.

He tumbled off of his climbing branch into his water dish, tumbled out of the water dish onto the astroturf. He didn't appear to be winning, so I opened the door planning on reaching in with the tongs and quickly killing the rat. As soon as I opened the door he tumbled out onto the table, and with this new found room he managed to get a 2nd coil around the rat and it was dead in a few seconds.

I never feed live prey if I can help it. I fed him a live mouse for his first meal and he has a scar to show for it. I felt like an idiot, but at least he got out apparently unscathed this time. No scratches or bites that I can see.

I tried to tread the fine line between feeding safely and enticing a finicky eater. I failed.

Edit: To clarify, I put the rat on the ground under him, I didn't do anything as massively stupid as hold the rat out to him in my hand.

[infernalis]

Well the good news is your snake is safe back in the cage.

[Nafun]

Nah, the good news is that he ate a rat!

[shaunyboy]

as infernalis said as long as you gently and calmly put your snake back in after a feed you will have no problems.i feed a few of my carpets in seperate feeding tubs outside their own tanks.ive never had any problems with the snakes in question.you do run the risk of getting bit the odd time,as sometimes their still in feeding mode.also i wouldnt beat yourself up too much about feeding live.some times thats what it takes to get them back feeding.your supervising the proccess you cant do much more than that.
cheers shaun

[Hillsberry]

You can pick him up. He should be fine as long as you put him in his enclosure right after. My Jungle Capret eats in a feeding box and I leave her in there for like a few mins once I dont see the rat anymore. Then I pick her up and put her in her enclosure. And she is fine

[Nafun]

I was just really concerned about him regurgitating since he hadn't eaten in two weeks, and hasn't eaten regularly since before his last shed over a month ago. But he kept it down, and has been happily digesting ever since.

[Lankyrob]

Ours all eat in seperate tubs - once the mouth is totally shut with no bits of mice hanging out i pick up the tub (not the snake) and gently tip the tub towards the entrance of the viv/faunarium so that the snake then crawls back into their home thmeselves. Normally straight into their hide.

[illcyat420]

My boa will ONLY eat live. I know there are people that say you can easily get a boa on FT but I've tried several times...for 2 months at a time....in fact, my boa will not even eat if I am present and that makes me nervous leaving a live rat in with him. I usually leave the room and listen from outside the door...it doesn't usually take long

[Nafun]

My bp is so lazy, sometimes I think he refuses to eat because it's too much work.