Tidy little scrub

[Selkielass]

I observed something interesting while feeding Abby today.
I noticed she has problems with full sized night crawlers, so I gathered some small worms to offer her.
She touched them with her nose, then proceeded to wipe the slime off on the paper towel substrate!

I thought I had accidentally got one of the 'red' worms that are no-no's so later I cut a night crawler into quarters (Each section a bit over an inch long.) and put the pieces into a shallow glass dish.

She pounced with on a section, gobbled it down, then spent a minute or so cleaning up by wiping her mouth and head on the substrate! She refused to go after any more of the worm, I suspect because the dish is now full of slime and worm guts.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? Is a quarter of a large nightcrawler a sufficient meal for an 11 inch garter?

[Holly]

My Dekayi does this! He wipes off his face after a meal, it's so weird but cute!

[guidofatherof5]

How big was the worm? Do I understand correctly that your snake ate 1/4 of the worm cut-up?
Most of my radixes wipe their mouths after eating. Many times it's on my arm.
It's kind of a two fold move. They wipe and push against me which helps in moving the worm down.

[ssssnakeluvr]

thats normal, just cleaning off their face. worms are mostly water....quarter of a worm isn't much of a meal... needs more.

[oki-inu]

My easterns do that all the time, too.

[drache]

yeah, garters apparently do have a sense of cleanliness - even the ones with the big poop blotches halfway down their bodies. Some of my garters will not eat worms at all, and I suspect it's the slime that's bothering them. I wonder whether cutting the worms up makes it better or worse

[infernalis]

I have seen this in Dekayi and garters, never when they eat whole pinkie mice though.

[gartermorphs]

yah i noticed my new nebraska albino wipeing his face off as we all know garters are so silly!

[guidofatherof5]

yeah i noticed my new nebraska albino wipeing his face off as we all know garters are so silly!

And apparently very well mannered

[mustang]

checker does it too!