Hmph. I plan to post every day to keep an up-to-date online log of what I'm doing in terms of daily care with the animals, and here it is three months after my last post.
Not to say we haven't been caring for the animals in that interim time - some days it feels like I don't do anything BUT clean-feed-water-check SOMETHING. We're starting to think it'd be a good idea to check with our local technical college, which runs an animal care course, to find someone who'd like to spend a few hours a week helping tend our ever-increasing collection. If nothing else it would give us the opportunity to consider having a holiday.
We definitely seem to be changing focus a bit to the ones without legs or eyelids - mostly corns and royals, although we still have a few oddities (including our latest acquisition, a Northern Pine snake).
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
Wednesday: My heart has joined the thousand
Went upstairs to get a lightbulb and noticed that Wednesday, one of the leopard geckos I hatched in 2006, was lying on the floor out in the open. This is not normal for a nocturnal/crepuscular animal. No movement, no breathing, no flinching. She can't have been dead long; she wasn't stiff yet, and she didn't smell of anything but gecko. I must have missed her by an hour or two at the most.
At the moment I feel like I have more dead animals in the freezer and buried in the garden than I have live animals in the house.
I'm sorry, Wednesday. I knew you were having trouble shedding, but I didn't know you were dying.
At the moment I feel like I have more dead animals in the freezer and buried in the garden than I have live animals in the house.
I'm sorry, Wednesday. I knew you were having trouble shedding, but I didn't know you were dying.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Sunday: Rodent Day
Nyoka has decided she would like to digest half - and only half - of her meal. The rest she threw back up. I think I'm going to have to go to feeding her very small meals more frequently - once she's had a chance to recover from having regurgitated. That means we'll have to skip feeding her for ten days or so - and her next feed will be dusted with Avipro vitamin and probiotic powder.
We also cleaned out the rodent cages - a fairly major production seeing as we have fourteen adult female and six adult male rats and ten babies, plus an uncountable number of Multimammates. Unfortunately cleanout day is also usually byebye day; we do cull out males and surplus females of both species for the moment because we don't need all of them for breeding. The culled ones are euthanised, then fed to our snakes.
I also discovered that rats who are being bathed because they've gotten themselves filthy in the food you've given them as a treat shriek like you're killing them. The amount of leaping about, squealing and looking at me pitifully you'd have thought I was bathing them in sulphuric acid, not lukewarm water with baby shampoo.
We also cleaned out the rodent cages - a fairly major production seeing as we have fourteen adult female and six adult male rats and ten babies, plus an uncountable number of Multimammates. Unfortunately cleanout day is also usually byebye day; we do cull out males and surplus females of both species for the moment because we don't need all of them for breeding. The culled ones are euthanised, then fed to our snakes.
I also discovered that rats who are being bathed because they've gotten themselves filthy in the food you've given them as a treat shriek like you're killing them. The amount of leaping about, squealing and looking at me pitifully you'd have thought I was bathing them in sulphuric acid, not lukewarm water with baby shampoo.
Friday, 25 April 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 24 April 2008
Thursday Morning: The Old Rack in Reptile Room 2
With the mornings getting lighter and lighter, I just plain can't sleep until the alarm goes off. And rather than just lying in bed and thinking "gee, I wish I could go back to sleep"....
I've checked on the fifteen corn snake eggs in my half-assed incubator (it consists of a plastic tub, no airholes, three-quarters full of damp vermiculite, sitting at the back of a shelf in the back-heated home-built rack) and the ones at the top are all showing a lovely rose-pink glow when you shine a flashlight sideways through them. Candling them and seeing that rose glow means that there's something in them... that the egg was fertile. A yellow glow usually means that the egg is an infertile dud and won't hatch - but because corn snake eggs stick together when they're first laid, I wouldn't actually try to take out the infertile ones.
Then on to cleaning cages and feeding. Just four this morning - it's about all I can do before I have to get ready for work properly, and one of them makes THAT take longer.
Il Palazzo, my hybrid cornsnake/Japanese ratsnake, is the easiest. Top up the water bowl, spot check for poo and remove, and wave a prekilled or frozen/thawed fuzzy rat in his direction. He's genuinely lovely as a snake - sort of a caramel brown with saddle blotches at the front (I think he got this from his Pantherophis guttattus mum) going to a blue-green narrowly banded saddle pattern at the back (this came from his Elaphe climacophora dad). I'm expecting him to grow a bit more - he's only about three feet long now and five isn't out of the question for what he is. It's fascinating that an Old World species can crossbreed successfully with a New World one... at least he doesn't look anything like either parent, so he can't really be mistaken for either one. Hybrids that look like hybrids are fine by me; I'm not as happy with cryptic ones that look like one of the parent species.
Next is Cerastes, our whitesided Texas rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus lindheimeri). He's also still just a baby, and thus far though he is a jumpy little beggar he is not snappy or inclined to strike at anything other than his food. He looks like someone only half-painted him - or as though he crawled through whitewash at some point. He got two multimammate rat fluffs this morning - they're an African rodent about halfway between the size of a mouse and a rat, easy to breed but oh they bite like buggers. My finger's still sore from the one who got me on Tuesday night, right up under the fingernail.
Nutmeg is a young juvenile African house snake - we suspect he's Lamprophis maculata, the Dotted house snake - who is deep rich brown, almost black. His breakfast was a tiny multimammate fuzzy which he rather ignored - I expect it'll be gone when I get home.
And last but definitely not least was Sierra. Sierra is an amelanistic striped Lampropeltis getulus californiae. This can be translated into English as Tail-Rattling Musk-and-Crap Machine. Or California Kingsnake, if you prefer. She uses her tail to fling musk, poo and urates all over ANYONE who attempts to pick her up. And though I appear unable to smell snake musk (which is supposedly a blessing) it is meant to smell of garlic and nastiness. I dunno - I can't smell it. I wonder if my coworkers can? She was busily tailrattling at the fluffy rat when I left her.
Now, since this blog doesn't have "geographic markers" as such unless you pick up a few spellings here and there, I'm in the UK; over here live feeding isn't well thought of nor is it completely legal if you're doing it for shits and giggles. I don't live feed anything that won't starve to death unless I do... everyone who WILL eat dead prey gets dead prey, whether it be freshly humanely euthanised (I use CO2) or thawed out frozen storebought. Please, if you think it'd be cool to feed live... remember that rats and mice can and do bite if they're scared, and that your snake is pretty stupid compared to a rat. If the rat CAN get the advantage it will, and a rat can maim or kill even a boa or python.
I've checked on the fifteen corn snake eggs in my half-assed incubator (it consists of a plastic tub, no airholes, three-quarters full of damp vermiculite, sitting at the back of a shelf in the back-heated home-built rack) and the ones at the top are all showing a lovely rose-pink glow when you shine a flashlight sideways through them. Candling them and seeing that rose glow means that there's something in them... that the egg was fertile. A yellow glow usually means that the egg is an infertile dud and won't hatch - but because corn snake eggs stick together when they're first laid, I wouldn't actually try to take out the infertile ones.
Then on to cleaning cages and feeding. Just four this morning - it's about all I can do before I have to get ready for work properly, and one of them makes THAT take longer.
Il Palazzo, my hybrid cornsnake/Japanese ratsnake, is the easiest. Top up the water bowl, spot check for poo and remove, and wave a prekilled or frozen/thawed fuzzy rat in his direction. He's genuinely lovely as a snake - sort of a caramel brown with saddle blotches at the front (I think he got this from his Pantherophis guttattus mum) going to a blue-green narrowly banded saddle pattern at the back (this came from his Elaphe climacophora dad). I'm expecting him to grow a bit more - he's only about three feet long now and five isn't out of the question for what he is. It's fascinating that an Old World species can crossbreed successfully with a New World one... at least he doesn't look anything like either parent, so he can't really be mistaken for either one. Hybrids that look like hybrids are fine by me; I'm not as happy with cryptic ones that look like one of the parent species.
Next is Cerastes, our whitesided Texas rat snake (Pantherophis obsoletus lindheimeri). He's also still just a baby, and thus far though he is a jumpy little beggar he is not snappy or inclined to strike at anything other than his food. He looks like someone only half-painted him - or as though he crawled through whitewash at some point. He got two multimammate rat fluffs this morning - they're an African rodent about halfway between the size of a mouse and a rat, easy to breed but oh they bite like buggers. My finger's still sore from the one who got me on Tuesday night, right up under the fingernail.
Nutmeg is a young juvenile African house snake - we suspect he's Lamprophis maculata, the Dotted house snake - who is deep rich brown, almost black. His breakfast was a tiny multimammate fuzzy which he rather ignored - I expect it'll be gone when I get home.
And last but definitely not least was Sierra. Sierra is an amelanistic striped Lampropeltis getulus californiae. This can be translated into English as Tail-Rattling Musk-and-Crap Machine. Or California Kingsnake, if you prefer. She uses her tail to fling musk, poo and urates all over ANYONE who attempts to pick her up. And though I appear unable to smell snake musk (which is supposedly a blessing) it is meant to smell of garlic and nastiness. I dunno - I can't smell it. I wonder if my coworkers can? She was busily tailrattling at the fluffy rat when I left her.
Now, since this blog doesn't have "geographic markers" as such unless you pick up a few spellings here and there, I'm in the UK; over here live feeding isn't well thought of nor is it completely legal if you're doing it for shits and giggles. I don't live feed anything that won't starve to death unless I do... everyone who WILL eat dead prey gets dead prey, whether it be freshly humanely euthanised (I use CO2) or thawed out frozen storebought. Please, if you think it'd be cool to feed live... remember that rats and mice can and do bite if they're scared, and that your snake is pretty stupid compared to a rat. If the rat CAN get the advantage it will, and a rat can maim or kill even a boa or python.
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
My morning routine: Waking up the Lizards
Every morning we have a set routine.
Before I get out of bed, the timer switches on the lighting and heating for the "display" stack in Reptile Room 1. This is an eight-cage enclosure housing my leopard geckos, my fat-tailed geckos, my first cornsnake Jasper and my Everglades rat snake Irwin. The cages all run off of a dimming thermostat - this is to make sure that nobody gets too warm in their enclosure, and it required a LOT of tweaking to get the wattages of the light bulbs just right.
Everyone is unheated overnight - they never drop below normal room temperature, but it simulates a stronger night-time period for them.
After I get up, the timer on the other side of the room switches on the heat lamp for the slow worms (actually a type of legless lizard, NOT a snake!) and for Domino, our female Argentine black and white tegu. And here lies the fun part: She has been brumating for the last few months, but it's springtime and we want her to wake up. This involves reaching into the hidebox at the cool end of her 6*3*3 foot cage and convincing her to come out, then plopping her onto her bark basking platform at the warm end. This is currently heated by one 100-watt spot bulb and one 60-watt spot; she also has a 24-inch 10% UVB fluorescent tube.
The other morning routine is getting Irwin the rat snake out for a little exercise and keeping him in good calm handleable-by-kids temperament. At four feet long and three years old he has nearly lost all his baby blotching and is strongly striped from nose to tail in light orange and brown. Based on his proportions he might wind up being a very big snake indeed - this species can get to 7 feet in length. He's actually nosying at my fingers as I am typing this.
Last, we go downstairs into the front room and switch on Diablo and Chess's lights - Diablo is a three-foot adult male Nile monitor, who hates everyone and everything except for raw eggs and locusts. Chess is a young (we-think-he's-male) Argentine B&W Tegu - someday he and Domino might be housed together in a 7*3*3 enclosure in our front room, if they get along long term. If not, they'll keep their own separate houses, just as they have now. We also mist down Jareth the crested gecko's vivarium in the corner - this is because he won't drink water from a bowl, but he will lap it off of the leaves of his fake plants.
Then off to work to pay for feeding this lot.
Before I get out of bed, the timer switches on the lighting and heating for the "display" stack in Reptile Room 1. This is an eight-cage enclosure housing my leopard geckos, my fat-tailed geckos, my first cornsnake Jasper and my Everglades rat snake Irwin. The cages all run off of a dimming thermostat - this is to make sure that nobody gets too warm in their enclosure, and it required a LOT of tweaking to get the wattages of the light bulbs just right.
Everyone is unheated overnight - they never drop below normal room temperature, but it simulates a stronger night-time period for them.
After I get up, the timer on the other side of the room switches on the heat lamp for the slow worms (actually a type of legless lizard, NOT a snake!) and for Domino, our female Argentine black and white tegu. And here lies the fun part: She has been brumating for the last few months, but it's springtime and we want her to wake up. This involves reaching into the hidebox at the cool end of her 6*3*3 foot cage and convincing her to come out, then plopping her onto her bark basking platform at the warm end. This is currently heated by one 100-watt spot bulb and one 60-watt spot; she also has a 24-inch 10% UVB fluorescent tube.
The other morning routine is getting Irwin the rat snake out for a little exercise and keeping him in good calm handleable-by-kids temperament. At four feet long and three years old he has nearly lost all his baby blotching and is strongly striped from nose to tail in light orange and brown. Based on his proportions he might wind up being a very big snake indeed - this species can get to 7 feet in length. He's actually nosying at my fingers as I am typing this.
Last, we go downstairs into the front room and switch on Diablo and Chess's lights - Diablo is a three-foot adult male Nile monitor, who hates everyone and everything except for raw eggs and locusts. Chess is a young (we-think-he's-male) Argentine B&W Tegu - someday he and Domino might be housed together in a 7*3*3 enclosure in our front room, if they get along long term. If not, they'll keep their own separate houses, just as they have now. We also mist down Jareth the crested gecko's vivarium in the corner - this is because he won't drink water from a bowl, but he will lap it off of the leaves of his fake plants.
Then off to work to pay for feeding this lot.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
First post: Exit Kurhah, Nashira and Polaris
Breeding leopard geckos is something I thought I loved.
I bought my first leopard geckos several years ago - a pair of Patternless "girls" who turned out to be, two for two, boys. I originally wanted them so that I could breed a particularly nice looking morph - a "Banana Blizzard" - to sell for lots of money so I could buy a blue and gold macaw. I planned to get one male banana blizzard, a female, plus two female blizzards and two female patternless. Alya and Albali came along and spoiled all that - being both boys, I rather had to jump-start into building new enclosures (you can't house males together long term - they'll fight and kill each other) and wound up picking a group of females that didn't go with my original breeding plans at all.
Never buy reptiles who haven't absolutely fallen in love with OR who don't produce what you want - if you've got a breeding goal in mind, pick breeders who will get you where you mean to go; if you just want to buy animals you love the look of, don't be surprised if you get a lot of little normal-looking babies... which are VERY hard to sell on.
I eventually settled on three boys (Alya, Albali and a male bought with a specific breeding goal in mind, Blizzard het albino Kurhah) and ten girls. Of the thirteen we had at the beginning of last year, over a third of them were geckos we hatched ourselves - Keid (2004), Chara (2005), Maybe, Polaris and Wednesday (all 2006). The others - Celaeno (Albino brooch-lizard and peopleconverter), Lesuth (the tubby stroppy one), Nashira (the albino psychotic eatbeast), Shuja (An accidental blizzard), Sadalbari (The only one who looks like what they do in the wild) ... I had my favourites. Nashira - Nash for short - I gave the name I was going to call my macaw. Getting them I realised I'd never want NOT to have reptiles - that no matter what else happens there will always be at least one scaly in my house.
In the last year I've lost four geckos in my care - my favourite two girls, Celaeno and Keid, died in 2007 when they became egg bound with three-egg clutches (as did my friend's girl Alacantra - who just died yesterday) and Maybe, when Shuja decided to bite one of her feet off. Losing Alacantra was the last straw. I'm ... disillusioned with the idea of breeding geckos. I don't want to go and open a cage, look at a girl and go ask Onissarle to check and see if she's as dead as I think she is. I don't think I can take the feeling of "I chose to breed this animal and that choice has killed her" any more. Thinking about Celaeno - and it's been a year since she died - still hurts. That little gecko put her hand on my heart and I miss her.
I know, I know, where there's livestock there's dead stock. Something to keep in mind - don't breed a female unless you're willing to take the risk with her life. If you're not willing to lose her, don't breed her.
Which is why I sold Kurhah, Nashira and Polaris. I didn't want to see them go... but I can't take keeping a breeding group I don't dare breed any more. They've gone to someone who knows what they're doing; my remaining six leopard geckos will be pets now.
Maybe someday I'll decide I want to breed leos again.
I bought my first leopard geckos several years ago - a pair of Patternless "girls" who turned out to be, two for two, boys. I originally wanted them so that I could breed a particularly nice looking morph - a "Banana Blizzard" - to sell for lots of money so I could buy a blue and gold macaw. I planned to get one male banana blizzard, a female, plus two female blizzards and two female patternless. Alya and Albali came along and spoiled all that - being both boys, I rather had to jump-start into building new enclosures (you can't house males together long term - they'll fight and kill each other) and wound up picking a group of females that didn't go with my original breeding plans at all.
Never buy reptiles who haven't absolutely fallen in love with OR who don't produce what you want - if you've got a breeding goal in mind, pick breeders who will get you where you mean to go; if you just want to buy animals you love the look of, don't be surprised if you get a lot of little normal-looking babies... which are VERY hard to sell on.
I eventually settled on three boys (Alya, Albali and a male bought with a specific breeding goal in mind, Blizzard het albino Kurhah) and ten girls. Of the thirteen we had at the beginning of last year, over a third of them were geckos we hatched ourselves - Keid (2004), Chara (2005), Maybe, Polaris and Wednesday (all 2006). The others - Celaeno (Albino brooch-lizard and peopleconverter), Lesuth (the tubby stroppy one), Nashira (the albino psychotic eatbeast), Shuja (An accidental blizzard), Sadalbari (The only one who looks like what they do in the wild) ... I had my favourites. Nashira - Nash for short - I gave the name I was going to call my macaw. Getting them I realised I'd never want NOT to have reptiles - that no matter what else happens there will always be at least one scaly in my house.
In the last year I've lost four geckos in my care - my favourite two girls, Celaeno and Keid, died in 2007 when they became egg bound with three-egg clutches (as did my friend's girl Alacantra - who just died yesterday) and Maybe, when Shuja decided to bite one of her feet off. Losing Alacantra was the last straw. I'm ... disillusioned with the idea of breeding geckos. I don't want to go and open a cage, look at a girl and go ask Onissarle to check and see if she's as dead as I think she is. I don't think I can take the feeling of "I chose to breed this animal and that choice has killed her" any more. Thinking about Celaeno - and it's been a year since she died - still hurts. That little gecko put her hand on my heart and I miss her.
I know, I know, where there's livestock there's dead stock. Something to keep in mind - don't breed a female unless you're willing to take the risk with her life. If you're not willing to lose her, don't breed her.
Which is why I sold Kurhah, Nashira and Polaris. I didn't want to see them go... but I can't take keeping a breeding group I don't dare breed any more. They've gone to someone who knows what they're doing; my remaining six leopard geckos will be pets now.
Maybe someday I'll decide I want to breed leos again.
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