How Concerned should I be that my Wandering had my Valley's Head in (Her?) Mouth

[LowCountrySerpents]

After considering several species of snake for my persistent 10 year old, we decided on Garters for probably the reasons most of you did.

So far, it's been everything we hoped for, although I'd say the two biggest surprises have been how much different their personalities are, and how territorial they are.

I have two Valley Garters, and two Wandering. In general the two valley have been far more active and skittish. When you walk by their enclosure, you're sure to see a couple streaking ribbons, and the wandering are definitely pretty chill.

Yesterday, I upgraded their enclosure. I should also note, the Valley were born June 20th, and are about the same size as the Wandering borin July 13th.

What I beleive to be the Female Wandering is the biggest, with the two valley close behind, and the male Wandering being the most chill and smallest of them all, yet still a decent eater.

You would think, trees to climb, a pond to swim in, and fish to eat, would make them all happy, but after 4 days of cohabitating peacfully in a smaller less decked out enclosure, I heard a noise this morning, and when I looked down, the female wandering had one of the ribbons by the neck. Since these ribbons are skittish, and one of them seemed to be aggressively gaurding the pond and fish, I decided not to intervene. The wandering released the valley shortly, but a few minutes later, the wandering is trying to fish, and the valley seems to want to harass it while it does, so they splash around again, and this time the wandering emerges from the water with the valley's head inside it's mouth, and it seemed like it was trying to swallow it, even though they're almost the same size. At this point, I grabbed the bottle of crown royal and headed to the bathroom for a q-tip, hoping a swab of liquor could end the melee.

So my question is, is this "normal" jockeying to establish the hierchy, or does literally trying to swallow a cage mate of equal size mean this may be an unmanageable problem?

[guidofatherof5]

Wandering Garters have a cannibalistic nature. It would be best to house that species alone.

[MNGuy]

Don’t leave live fish or any food alone in a tank with multiple garters. They will fight and compete and try (and maybe succeed!) to eat each other. Get rid of the fish now! It’s a disaster waiting to happen. And whenever you feed them you MUST watch them like a hawk until all of the food is gone.

I feed my two garters separately because they are very competitive and aggressive at feeding time and the bigger one has tried to steal food right out of the other one’s mouth, which resulted in her trying to eat its head.