That's My Girl

Psych. That's what she named him (ok, not sure it's a 'him' but whatever).

As you can see from the pictures, she's in utter terror because I'm a horrible father and I foisted this repugnant reptile on her.

One thing I was not sure about is whether or not she would be upset by watching it eat. I explained to her what I was going to feed it and how it would be done and she was a little hesitant but her curiosity overcame her reservations.

We went to the pet store and bought a feeder mouse. She asked the girl at the counter if she could hold it and before I could answer, the girl explained that if her smell was on the mouse, the snake might later think she was food and attack her. That was good enough for Little Dif, she wanted no part of touching that mouse. She did ask if we could get another one as a pet though. Umm... no.

Poor little mouse wasn't aware that it faced its doom. While still in the paper bag I bought him in, I whacked it up against the bricks a couple of times to stun him. Why did I stun him? Easy, I didn't know if the newly captive snake would eat it right away or not and I didn't want the prey to become the attacker. So I dumped the mouse in to the snake's box (I don't have a proper cage for it yet) and it was just twitching (oops, whacked it a bit to hard I think) for a bit before it stopped moving completely.

Slowly Psych moved over it, his tongue flicking out over the surface. It was all very slow deliberate movements. The mouse was completely still though so there was no need to rush. The first thing Psych grabbed at was the neck. He tugged at the rodent a bit and then let go. I guess he figured he wasn't going to swallow it from that position. He let go and moved up toward the head. He unhinged his jaw and took the whole head in his mouth.

Little Dif watched in fascination without a trace of concern for the mouse. Perhaps if the mouse were running around trying to escape she would have been more sympathetic but I think she was enthralled with the process.

It took less than 5 minutes from the first bite to seeing the tail disappear between what I swore were smiling lips. We watched the lump of mouse work its way deeper in to Psychs body. It finally stopped about half way down.

Overall, I rate this pretty high on the list of educational experiences for Little Dif. It's certainly one she'll remember for a very long time.