Marnie's Snakes

[EasternGirl]

Now she just keeps doing something weird with her mouth like she's readjusting her jaw. This is all very strange. Would she still be digesting from eating yesterday to the point that picking her up today could have made her do this?

[kibakiba]

Yeah, pinkies take quite some time to digest. It was the same thing with Snakey. I'm not sure about the yawning/readjusting jaw though.

[EasternGirl]

So maybe that's all that it was...she gets all nervous when I pick her up...she is so skiddish. Maybe she just got upset and hadn't digested her food. I still don't know what Seeley's problem was though.

[EasternGirl]

Well, I fed the snakes again tonight. Cee Cee was a complete pig again and went after my fingers again. She has learned to identify the hemostats and knows its feeding time when she sees me coming to the enclosure with the hemostats. (anyone who ever thought garters were not intelligent..should understand that this is textbook Pavlovian classical conditioning...like with the famous Pavlov's dogs experiments...and there must be some sort of intelligence in order for the conditioning to occur)...sorry, I digress to my years as a psych professor....anyway...she sees the hemostats and pops her head out of the tank and starts looking for food. She started off very polite..but then she started striking like crazy and then when the food was gone, she started going after my fingers. Oh, Cee Cee...

I put a towel down in Hermes' tank so that I could feed him with the hemostats again. He also went crazy going after the food, but decided he was going to be slick and try to drag the food under the towel into the substrate...so once again, I had to finish feeding him by putting the food on a dish under his hide. I will either have to move him to a feed tank or just feed him on a dish.

Seeley would not eat..again. Now I am definitely concerned. Maybe it is because he is going to shed soon. I hope so. But he really needs to eat something soon.

[guidofatherof5]

Sounds like a fun time around the Scott house.

[EasternGirl]

My mother walked by while I was feeding Cee Cee and she got scared and struck out at a piece of food that I was holding so hard that she made me jump back!

[infernalis]

why not get some didicated feeding totes like I use.

Never had any substrate swallowed or any impactions that way.

[katach]

Or put a hand towel down over the substrate like I do. They don't seen to mind and don't get freaked out as much as moving them to a feeding tank. Fish Bait won't eat if moved. The adults do fine, but not the baby.

[kimbosaur]

I remember reading a thread not too, too long ago where something similar was happening. Spitting up water and opening and closing of the jaw...I can't seem to find it anywhere. I'm starting to think I imagined it...

[EasternGirl]

Probably not Kimberly, as other members have mentioned to me that they have seen their snakes do this, especially if they get startled right after drinking. They both seem to be doing fine now..so I haven't called the vet yet...I'm just keeping an eye on them. If they start acting weird again...I'll call. Seeley is hiding a lot and looking very dark and dry...so I think he is going into shed mode. His eyes haven't clouded over yet, but he must be getting close.

@Kat...I did try the hand towel...actually because I had seen you mention that on your thread. But Hermes just drug the food off the hand towel and under it! Sneaky little snake!

@Wayne...do you just buy shoe totes from the dollar store?