hazliya | To eat a mouse (Reply)

I have been asked to document Bowie eating a mouse, as it seems impressive that he can swallow something five times the size of his head. To that, I say: Yes, it is impressive. Yes, you can have pictures. So when I fed him tonight, it was with camera in hand.

I defrosted a mouse, put Bowie in his feeding tank, and fetched my surgical tongs. He's a pretty good eater; he usually strikes the mouse with very little encouragement.

Note that the squeamish may not want to look below the cut. It's pretty neat, though.

V. important: get a good angle. The skull is the first obstacle to overcome, so he eats it face-first and rotates the mouse so that his body and the mouse's form a straight line.

Head swallowed!

Side view of the above.

Shoulders are hurdle #2. Mostly because the front paws usually face forward, and are a bitch to get a stretched-out mouth over.

And shoulders are no longer an issue. Hips are taken care of as well.

Down to the back feet and tail...

The process of swallowing the tail. It's funny to watch - my favorite - because of the silly way t looks like he's trying to eat spaghetti.

Before he resets his jaw. (For those who don't know, snakes can only do this because they can unhook their jaws at the intersection and stretch like crazy.)

Ten seconds later, the mouse is a few inches down his esophagus.

Another ten seconds, and it's in his stomach. Watching them swallow is really something, albeit morbid. You see the size of the food shrink as everything is crushed by a system of ribs and solid muscle.

Now that he's decided he's done, Bowie knows the drill and gets restless, staring at the plastic hatch on top of the feeding tank until I open it.

And when I do open the hatch, he sits there politely and stares at me until I come pick him up. He's such a lazy snake. Smart, cute, but lazy. =)

This whole process takes about a minute and a half. He can swallow baby mice like nothing now, but the general rule of thumb is one appropriately-sized prey item a week.

And now I get to have dinner. Fantastic.

Hope that satisfies your curiosity. =)

-H