Feeding Time at the Zoo

Note:  If this entry is disjointed, I'm blaming the raging cold I managed to develop and am fighting right now.  Also, we went to Repticon Saturday and, miraculously, managed to come back with no new snakes!  My self-control is beyond comprehension.  Okay, it might have been somewhat enhanced by Brent's repeated chant of  "Baby, we don't need any more snakes right now" :P

Thursday nights at our house are officially Feeding Time at the Zoo.  I'm doing well with it now (a snake's gotta eat, yanno?) but the first time we fed the sand boas... well, let's just say it wasn't my most shining moment.

One reason I'd never had snakes before is because of the whole feeding issue.  I'd heard of snakes eating frozen/ thawed rodents and that seemed more palatable to me, but still I didn't get around to snake ownership until my younger son went on his We Must Acquire a Snake lobbying streak.  And even then, we were totally doing frozen/ thawed.

Thankfully, the sand boas eventually cooperated with us.  What I hadn't counted on was how much even frozen rodents could skeeve me out!  I swear, I was jumping and shrieking as I tried to fish the little things out of the baggie.  It was insane -- I mean, I'm an adult, right?

You couldn't have proven it that evening.

Finally we got those little suckers thawed (I just kept repeating "Small, poo-filled chickens" to myself) and went in to feed the snakes.

They were having none of it.

What?  I'd been told this would work like magic!  So I tried to pick up Sarah's pinkie again with the 12" long tweezers and kept dropping it because my hands were shaking so badly.  Yup, so skeeved out I could barely hold on to one, tiny defrosted rodent with a pair of tongs.

Genius.

Fortunately Brent was there and he worked on getting everyone to eat.  Meanwhile, I bravely fled the room when Sarah's mouse kind of... uh... exploded.  It didn't seem to bother her.  And Slither took for-freaking-ever to eat but eventually he, too, downed his pinkie.

I'm happy to say the next weekend I did much better.  I fished the pinkies out of their bag with neither a heebie or a jeebie and got everything thawed without so much as a whimper.  Sarah ate marvelously, and Slither continued his trend of being a bit of a picky eater.

Now since we've added Scales and Lucy to the mix, I have a new level of "heebie" and "jeebie" to deal with.  Thus far they're eating frozen/thawed (both ate last week, hooray!), but their food is fuzzier than the sand boas' and it's harder to trick myself into seeing it as a chicken.  Hopefully I'll get over it, and fast.

Well, I'm off.  Once again it's Feeding Time at the Zoo and I have rodents to warm.  Wish me luck.