This is Drako… he is a Banana het pied het desert ghost and roughly about two years old. There’s four others in the house and he’s definitely one of a kind but I can’t figure out if it’s owner error or if maybe he’s defective?? I knew months ago when we got him that his background was a little rough as he was a rescue and hasn’t been handled much. I’m trying so hard to work with him but it’s like he just doesn’t want that connection so I keep trying, well when feeding Drako he likes to squeeze his meal (per normal) and then this is where it gets weird… he will spend roughly an hour or less grabbing it and slinging it around his feeding area, taking small pieces off of it and readjusting his jaw before even eating it but like I said takes forever to eat and I mean I’ve never seen one fling it around so violently almost… I hate to word it like that I have so much hope for him and we’ve had a few sweet bonding moments and I want to bond with him so badly but I need advice he’s just not like any snake I’ve ever been around or had before…on a normal day he is jumpy and I just want him to feel safe…
As far as handling goes, you say you’ve only had him a few months and he’s had a rough background…
Its possible that getting him to warm up may take a very long time and progress in socializing reptiles is not linear, you will have ups and downs. Ball Pythons like most reptiles are solitary animals by nature especially if they were never socialized from the start, so handling him may be incredibly stressful to him at first. I’d reccomend maybe 5-10 minutes of handling a day, skip the day before and after feedings and keep unnecessary interactions to a minimum while he is in shed.
As for the food flinging… that sounds a little odd, does he show any odd behavior (wobbling, corkscrewing, or otherwise uncoordinated movements) outside of feeding time? What size meals does he eat? And how much does he weigh?
Taking a long time to eat doesn’t surprise me though, I have quite a few snakes of various species that like to take their sweet time, mostly Pythons and Boas though. They typically just stay coiled around their food constricting and they eat f/t so they may be just taking a while to realize that their prey is no longer “alive”, but your situation sounds different.
When he’s done eating he will hang his head back and upside down but the during I haven’t really seen. Since getting him I’ve learned medium naked rats are his favorite I’ve had fewer problems with them than anything else but still the same he flings it all around the feeding enclosure and again always so violently.
He’s got so much potential and my gosh he’s super funny he goes into “dinosaur pose” often and I just want him to be able to feel safe since being here I think he’s noticed the other snakes are happy and loved I just wanna be able to do the same for Drako…
He’s been getting his food a lot faster and you can tell he’s hungry but moving clear around the enclosure or flinging it into the side glass or on the water bowl things like that I’ve never seen he’s one where once he uncurls from it he doesn’t curl back up around it and I mean watching him for almost an hour last night it was just absolutely wild to see how he actually does things so I wasn’t sure if maybe it’s in one of the morphs or what. The upside down part I guess also having a baby spider didn’t make me think to much about that part as he does it to but I just want to understand him I suppose is how to word it….