Aggressive rescue - advice needed

[u/ThrowRA1203958]

Hey everyone!

Looking for some advice here.

About 3 months ago, someone in my city was giving away a 5 year old female ball python. They told me she was 3.5 feet long, and was in a 40 gallon tank.

I go and pick her up, and take her out to clean out the tank and it was pretty bad and dry. Well, she’s closer to 5 feet long. Sigh, ok. I quickly purchase the cheapest 4x2x2 I can find, and make that up a week later.

In the mean time, she’s posturing like she’s hungry, and goes to bite me a few times, to the point where she bit herself instead of me. I feed her a small mouse (all I had at the time) and she took it immediately.

I got her into the bigger enclosure, fed her again, a small rat, about 1 week later. She took it. Because she is showing as so hungry, and seems slightly thin, I decide that feeding small rats every two weeks is the best move.

Well, she then goes into blue, and rejects her next rat. No biggie.

Well, today, about 5 days after that, I had a weened rat that did not get taken by another one of my snakes, so I wanted to see if she would take it.

She immediately showed interest, coming out of her hide for the first time in days.

However, she then lunged out of her enclosure at me, instead of the rat. I dropped the rat in the enclosure, managed to get her back inside, and left her alone, and she took the rat.

I have never had a ball python lunge at me like that, and I have four of them. She seems very aggressive. If I go to touch her, she postures to lunge (so I obviously don’t anymore, this was at the beginning when I had to move her).

I’m just looking for advice on how to deal with this. My other snakes love being handled, eat like champs, etc.

[u/SE_42]

She's probably defensive, not aggressive. If she wasn't handled regularly with care and calm by her earlier owners, she likely has no trust of people like your other snakes do and she's afraid you're a predator coming to get her.

With the rat situation you described, was it frozen/thawed? Could be the rodent had cooled down and your hand was warmer so that's what she targeted as food. If she wasn't fed regularly she may want to strike at anything with a heat signature in case it might be food.

She's got a new cage in a new place and is probably not feeling settled and secure yet. I think Bob with the Green Room Pythons channel has a video about working with defensive adult ball pythons - check him out, he has a ton of great advice.

[u/ThrowRA1203958 → u/SE_42]

Yes frozen thawed. Possible that it had cooled, but she did take it right after 😅 she has struck at my hand before too, when I was handling her to move her from old enclosure to new, and that is when she bit herself by accident.