snake died

Question
QUESTION: We had a ball python that was 5 yrs old.  She had been eating large mice and small rats.  We fed her a rat, larger than usual.  She ate it and seemed to swell up.  Hours later, she threw up the rat and part of the rats stomach was hanging out.  About an hour later she was laying on her back and lifeless!  What happened? What did we do wrong??

ANSWER: Hi Andrea,

I am sorry to here about your pet snake. A few things first. Did you feed live or frozen thawed? If frozen thawed there could have been a good possibility the prey was still frozen inside. Another thought is that if they prey item was live your snake did not kill it and swallowed it alive. I witnessed this with one of my snakes but caught it and killed the rat before she got it down. Snakes can eat a prey item that is equal to the girth of the mid body.

Again sorry to hear about your snake.

Eric Rovegno

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: The rat was alive, but she killed it before she swallowed it. I am not sure why she died.  Thanks for your response.

Answer
Hi Andrea,

There is two possibilities. The first is the rat was not dead and was biting her internals. The other is the rat was to big and your snake could not push it down enough and was forced to reguritate and in doing this stressed herslef out to the point of death.

Sorry again about your snake.

Eric Rovegno