Never Forgotten: a Foster's Home Community - View Single Post

pitbulllady · 09-01-2008, 01:04 PM

This probably won't mean much to anyone but a die-hard "snake person", but my big female Midlands Water Snake(the one who had the 43 babies a little while ago), ate a MOUSE today! I was feeding the Rat, Corn and King Snakes, and one of the Rat Snakes was "in shed" and refused to eat(which is normal for snakes about to shed), and everyone else had already eaten their fill and even if one had eaten this left-over mouse, it probably would have thrown up afterwards(yeah, snakes will eat enough to make themselves sick sometimes-they're not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, sorta the reptilian version of Cheese). I hated to throw the mouse away, since once you thaw them out(they're dead and frozen), so just to see what would happen, I offered it to the Water Snake. To my absolute surprise, she grabbed it and swallowed it, without hesitating! This is VERY rare for a Water Snake to eat anything other than aquatic things, like fish or frogs, unless you trick them by rubbing the "odd" food item with a fish or frog, so it smells like their usual food. I hadn't done that; this was just a white mouse that smelled like a mouse, yet she ate it as if she'd been eating mice all her life! Just to see if that was a fluke, I thawed out a smaller mouse, and offered it to her-BAM, down the hatch! This sure beats going to the bait shop and buying a bucket of minnows!

pitbulllady

09-01-2008, 01:04 PM	#122
pitbulllady Co-Administrator Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: South Carolina Posts: 2,276	This probably won't mean much to anyone but a die-hard "snake person", but my big female Midlands Water Snake(the one who had the 43 babies a little while ago), ate a MOUSE today! I was feeding the Rat, Corn and King Snakes, and one of the Rat Snakes was "in shed" and refused to eat(which is normal for snakes about to shed), and everyone else had already eaten their fill and even if one had eaten this left-over mouse, it probably would have thrown up afterwards(yeah, snakes will eat enough to make themselves sick sometimes-they're not the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, sorta the reptilian version of Cheese). I hated to throw the mouse away, since once you thaw them out(they're dead and frozen), so just to see what would happen, I offered it to the Water Snake. To my absolute surprise, she grabbed it and swallowed it, without hesitating! This is VERY rare for a Water Snake to eat anything other than aquatic things, like fish or frogs, unless you trick them by rubbing the "odd" food item with a fish or frog, so it smells like their usual food. I hadn't done that; this was just a white mouse that smelled like a mouse, yet she ate it as if she'd been eating mice all her life! Just to see if that was a fluke, I thawed out a smaller mouse, and offered it to her-BAM, down the hatch! This sure beats going to the bait shop and buying a bucket of minnows! pitbulllady Last edited by pitbulllady; 09-01-2008 at 01:05 PM.