I need to buy live pinkie (newborn) mice to feed my pet snake.  Frozen
mice will not work because the snake refuses to eat them.  I need
these mice before 10/21/06 or the snake may die.  Answering this
question will involve some phone calls since you need up-to-date
information from pet stores who may not always have the mice in stock.
 Where can I buy live pinkie mice in the Manhattan burrough of New
York City?

---

Clarification of Question by melquiades-ga on 20 Oct 2006 11:31 PDT

I would still like an answer even after 10/21.  You can answer up
until the expiration of this request.

Years ago, I visited a guy in Brighton (here in the UK) and was
surprised to find that he had 20 rats throughout his house, all caged,
fortunately.

I enquired how come he started keeping rats.

He said he used to keep snakes and then he bred rats to feed the
snakes until he found that rats were much more interesting than snakes
which, by all accounts, are very boring - except when they escape and
then they can get anywhere.

I then enquired if he fed the snakes to the rats but he refused to
answer my question.

This doesn't solve today's dinner menu but ...

Maybe tomorrow?

melquiades,

why do they have to be newborn?  shouldn't any snake worth his salt be
able to handle a grown mouse?

my friend had an experience somewhat similar to bryan's friend's.  he
had a pet turtle in an aquarium tank, and every couple of weeks he
would throw in a couple dozen live fish for it to eat.  to keep them
alive for the couple of weeks it took for them to be eaten, he also
fed them fish food.  one fish managed to escape its fate long enough
to grow larger than the turtle.  for a while, he had a pet turtle and
a pet fish.  eventually the turtle died, but he kept the fish for
years.

-cab

I have to feed the snake newborn mice because the snake is a newborn
itself.  It's only about 6" long and as thick as a soda straw.

-Melquiades

Call up a NYC zoo (Central Park, Prospect Park, Bronx Zoo), and ask
where they procure food for newborn snakes.

now i'm having a hard time sleeping, because i can't get the question
of "how do newborn snakes survive in the wild?" out of my mind.  do
they eat bugs? their smaller siblings?  there can't be that many
pinkie mice lying around waiting for them.  and obviously their
mothers aren't going to feed them.

another thing keeping me up: is it really true that if a snake has the
opportunity to eat a dead mouse, and there is nothing else around, and
it is starving, it would rather die than eat it?  just seems unlikely.
 surely instinct takes over and it does what has to be done? reminds
me of another question about a dog a week or two ago.

i assume it is obvious by now that i can't help you with this, but i
really do hope someone can.  if not, can't you just go thru the yellow
pages and call every pet store until you hit one that knows?

good luck.

-cab

Cab-

The species of snakes that I have - corn snake - does not eat insects
or other snakes, although some species of snakes do both.  This
species seems to almost exclusively feed on small mammals.  It does
seem a little surprising that the newly-hatched snakes in the wild are
able to find a supply of very small mammals, but somehow they manage. 
They probably have instincts to seek out the type of places where mice
burrow.

The behavior of these pet snakes probably doesn't tell much about the
behavior of wild ones.  I think that, like many animals, they don't
always thrive in captivity and may show some strange and unnatural
behaviors like not eating.  Given that, I don't think the snake has a
level of consciousness to choose starvation over dead prey, but
probably there's some circuit in the snake's brain which registers
"food" or "not food" for whatever it encounters, and these  dead,
frozen and thawed newborn mice I'm trying to feed it and simply
registering as "not food".

Maybe $10 is not enough to entice someone to do all this footwork?  I
might raise my offer here.

-Melquiades

interesting stuff.  what you say makes sense, so i agree my gut
instinct on this is likely wrong.

you may know this, but since this is your first time asking a question
on google answers, i should clarify that i'm not a researcher, just a
member of the peanut gallery.  however, having wasting lots of time
poking around here, it has been my experience that yes, questions that
require making phone calls instead of researching on the web tend to
get answered less often than others, probably due to the amount of
time invested in first getting the phone numbers,and then making the
calls.  a higher fee might get you some action, or you might consider
revising the question to ask for a list of possible sources with phone
numbers instead, and you do the calling.

or, you can appeal to their vanity and offer to name the snake after the answerer.

hope it works out.  good luck.

-cab

Call here and ask:

Dr. Carl Tomaschke 
Seneca Animal Hospital 
7441 Seneca St 
East Aurora, NY 14052 
Phone (716) 652-6120