Bedding question

[Drone man]

I have two retics...both about 5 ft long and in their own Animal plastics T8 enclosure with flexwatt heat and sliding glass doors. I have always used paper towels as bedding and decided to switch to aspen per my buddy that has all his snakes on aspen. Tonight was my first time feeding Frozen Thaw. They both had a cardboard box to try and eat off but they are quite good aggressive. My female supertiger did great but my male white phase Missed of course and ate a few prices of aspen. The rats were soaking wet. Give the size I’m not too worried and I see I should have dried the prey off before feeding. Other than that what ideas/suggestions do you have for cage feeding 2 retics on aspen?

Thanks