A few nights ago I messed up bad....(before folks read any further.. Garter snakes are one of the few species that actually thrive well when kept in multiples)
I was in the reptile room feeding snakes, but this time I was in a hurry (bad math.. I know)
All of the feeding boxes had snakes in them and like a dummy, I decided to feed a rather valuable pair of Sirtalis hets in the cage (supervised of course)
The smaller male took his first pinkie and promptly vanished up under his hide..
While he was gone, I tong fed the female (she's quite a bit bigger than her mate) and she promptly inhaled her pinkie. while she was busy, the male returned, so I fed him another.
Apparently he left the first pinkie under the hide where I could not see it
Flash forward a few minutes, I had assumed that they had eaten all of the food and went about taking care of the others in the room.
While I was doing this, they both simultaneously went for the pinkie that was hidden out of sight.. that's when the worst case scenario played out.. She being the larger of the two had accidentally ingested the male completely!!
When I checked on them there was just a little bit of tail showing from her mouth, and she was stretched a hell of a lot bigger than a couple pinks would have done.. My het albino male was gone! (or was he)
The male did a 180 in her belly and crawled right back out
I split them up, waited two days and then fed them both (properly in feed boxes this time) and amazingly enough both ate just fine.
The point to the story... if you are running late, feed them some other time, snakes don't need a schedule, that's a human trait..
I should have just fed them the next day.
Broke my own rule - almost lost 2 snakes
Who would have thought that was even POSSIBLE!!!!!
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