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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by n/a[/i] [br]Those of you who've heard of my corn snake Cy will know that she hatched with only one eye, and had feeding problems from the start. The shop reckoned that this was because she couldn't see the mouse properly and although I thought that her sense of smell ought to compensate, it was true that she seemed to feed better in a good light, often after cruising round the mouse as if to get a good look at it first. She will only eat a mouse that has had the back of its neck snipped open - whether the smell of spinal fluid attracts her I don't know. But not brained - she won't touch brained. As long as I provided her with what she liked, and left her alone to decide whether to eat (this could take hours) she would take her mouse - sometimes. Sometimes she would consider the mouse with a weird head tremor, nodding over it before eating. If she ate it. Not surprisingly, she's grown very slowly. At the beginning of this year, aged almost 2, she had only just graduated from pinks to fuzzies and jumpers, but in February she took her first small mouse. I thought the smell of a 'proper' furred mouse might attract her, and she was straight on to it. She's never been a snake I've considered assist-feeding; she's never looked emaciated. But she's definitely miniature. Shiloh, at a year younger, is the same size as Cy, if not bigger. But then Shiloh, after a slow start and assist-feeding, is now a ravenous gannet. I don't think setup has affected Cy's eating; she's been in the same viv for a year now. In late winter she fasted for weeks, but since that first small mouse, has eaten one mouse per month. Until I received my latest consignment of frozen rodents. In among the usual small white mice were some black ones. Now I've heard of snakes getting hooked on white mice and refusing any other colour of rodent, but for some reason I thought, wonder if Cy would eat a black mouse. So last Sunday I offered a black mouse, on tongs, and wiggled it for her. She has, apart from one strike feed as a hatchling, never responded to the wiggled mouse. She did this time. Wham! Strike, coil and straight down! I've never ever seen her coil! I couldn't believe my eyes! So again today, I defrosted her another black mouse. With her track record, I didn't expect her to take it. She looked at it with her one good eye, for a nano-second. Grab! Hard coil and mousey went down at a speed that wouldn't have disgraced my gopher snake! So, I'm left wondering. Can this just be coincidence? Better appetite with the spring weather? Or is it that the dark shape of the mouse is more clearly seen by her? Perhaps the sight in her good eye isn't that marvellous - who can tell what genetic or birth damage was caused in that small skull? Whatever it is, I'm very pleased. And perhaps once I've used up the quota of black mice, Cy might have become accustomed to her weekly mouse and take any mouse with the same gusto. Otherwise I'm going to have to research into harmless snake-friendly vegetable dyes and produce some jolly sky blue pink mice, with yellow dots on![:0][:D] [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature.