Friday: Midday + Migraine

Thursday brought me a present. A throwing-up migraine. The kind that sits in your head and says "I'm going to make you half blind, nauseous and unable to cope with normal noise and light levels, and I'm going to stick around for a while."

Yup, still have it today. Not at work - staring at a computer screen for too long ramps the low throb behind my left eye up to icepick level, and if you work in web design there just isn't much you can do at work OTHER than stare at a PC. At least writing this I can break off and go be sick or lie down in my nice dark room in the quiet instead.

What it does mean is that in between the above activities (take drugs, lie down, rush to bathroom and repeat) I can do little bits of reptile care. I didn't get the stuff I planned to do last night done, and some of it will have to wait until the weekend when Onissarle is not at work and can give me a hand.

I've been treating Bindi, a Rough-scaled sand boa (Eryx conicus), for mites. The little buggers came in on a royal python we bought at a show and have been irritating me (and the snakes) ever since. I may have to try mite predators because I really don't like using chemical insecticides on my animals. Poor Bindi, though, it must really be irritating her, because she's become seriously stroppy at me. Part of this may be because we had to take away her sand to prevent the mites from having anything to hide in, and this species is a burrower by nature.

A little later I'll be feeding our lodgers - Jabari and Nyoka, a pair of Kenyan sand boas (Eryx colubrinus loveridgei) and Dante the Mexican Milksnake (Lampropeltis triangulum annulata) who are lodging here with me until our friend Lou can pick them up; Jabari is a normal type with dark brown spots on orange, while Nyoka is an axanthic (that means she doesn't have yellow pigment. It also means she's worth five times what a normal is) with dark grey spots on a light grey background. Nyoka's also a pain in the butt - she wants VERY small food when she's fed, and anything that's even slightly too large will trigger her to throw it back up. Today she's going to get a few pinkies since she digests them just fine; sometimes she'll throw up a fuzzy if you give it to her. Jabari, on the other hand, is firmly convinced he can eat the entirety of a human, and gives it a good try every time we open up his cage (today he gets a fuzzy, not my fingers). Sand boas, as they are burrowers, are ambush predators; they'll hide under the sand with just their eyes and the tip of their muzzle sticking out. Watching them feed is like having your own personal Graboid. Dante's pretty new here; he's a lovely deep crimson, black and slightly creamy yellow/white banded and he threw a hoobly when I cleaned his cage earlier. Funny when he's not much longer than my hand!

I will also be feeding Kainite and Sardonyx, who are two female cornsnakes (P. guttattus) that I got last year. Kainite (the lavender) always eats like she has something to prove (we got her for free as a 'non feeder' who the breeder kindly gave to us in the hopes we could get her going - now she's up to eating fuzzies or even newborn rat pups). She's actually larger now than Sardonyx (the normal het lavender who gets pinkies), who is a bit picky and doesn't seem to get as much out of the food she eats. They're eventually going to be breeders - I have a matching male who is the sire to the eggs I currently have in the incubator, too.

Assuming all goes well and I don't wind up in bed for the rest of the day, I'll also be feeding Hoggle (Western Hognose, Heterodon nasicus nasicus), who is our only venomous snake. They're not one of the species that is considered "medically significant" - I don't know if there's any deaths associated to them, although anaphylactic shock would be a possibility. We haven't been bitten - Hoggle is all bluff and no bite at this point, and if I did get bitten I would have to let him chew on me to be envenomated, as they are a 'rear fanged' species. He's still pretty small, and is eating fuzzies; he doesn't constrict like most of our other snakes do, and tends to lunge at the food, then grab it and eat it when he realises it's not running away.