Feeding mishap

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Troyster

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I recently had a feeding mishap that i thought id share.

As usual Sundays are feeding day and a few weeks ago i thought id save some time and drop the rat into one of my bigger pythons enclosures instead of hand feeding him like usual and this is where things went wrong.

Upon opening the lid of his enclosure to drop in the rat he was ready and waiting and before i knew it he was already making his way out and over to me to accept his furry meal, which is his usual practice. But this time id already dropped the rat onto his basking log leaving me with nothing but a wad of paper towel id used to dry the rat with in my hand.Keep in mind i thaw my rats in a bucket of water and dry them off with a thick wad of paper towel before offering, I used this in an attempt to "shoo" him back into his enclosure but instead of returning to his enclosuring he snatched it out of my hand and threw coils around it (silly mistake i know).

Taking a second to consider my options i ran to the bathroom to get the Listerine.
Upon returning i wasnt sure how this would play out as he now had the paper towel properly constricted and was hanging out of his enclosue upside down. I began to drizzle mouth wash onto the the paper towel and hoped for the best. Id used about half a shot glass worth of Listerine before he realised something was different than usual and released his bite but not his coils.
Immediately i began to wonder what the repercussions of the mouth wash would be so decided a warm bath couldnt hurt. He had a soak for a few minutes before slithering out and into a towel to be properly dried off.
I handled him for a few minutes and he "seemed" ok so i placed him back into his enclosure.(probably some what confused as to what had happed)
It only took a minute or so for him to locate the rat which he made short work of.
Anyway a week later he had passed the meal and was his usual self with regards to handling etc so hopefully no harm no foul.

Moral of the story is:
A; Stick to the routine the animal knows instead of trying to save a couple of minutes and
B; it seems that if you are bitten in a food response situation or something similar the Listerine technique appears to work.
 
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