Jinzo & Jazz, leopard geckos

These two leopard geckos were surrendered to me last week after they had stopped eating and stopped being active. They had lost a lot of weight too. I'm currently force feeding them Critical Care to get some extra calories and nutrition in them. The female shed last night and the male ate a superworm on his own. I'm hoping they'll start gaining weight again quickly.

Sicky Boy Munch

I adopted out Munch awhile ago (vague timeline since I can't actually remember when! ;) ) and have been in touch with his owners since then. Today I met them at my vet with a very sick Munch.

This was him on Sunday:

This was him today: 

I had a blood draw done on Munch and a fecal test. He has a massive infestation of pinworms and an incredibly high white blood cell count that is turning toxic. He is throwing up fluids that he was given yesterday which tells me his stomach is not currently working properly. It's possible he has some sort of block or build up of pinworm eggs.

Munch is very sick. :(

I brought him home with me so I can do his supportive care and shots, etc.. He'll be in a sick tank for now. Hopefully the antibiotics and dewormer will start taking effect quickly and we can pull him back from the edge of death. I gave him his first dose of antibiotics before I put him in his soft, warm sick tank. If I can get him to keep fluids down tomorrow, I'll give him his first dose of dewormer.

And then we wait and see if his body has enough strength to keep fighting the infection.

Poor Munch. I hope he pulls through.

Rescue Chaos & Overlaod

My house looks like a rescue bomb went off. I got home from vacation a week ago and had vacation things and Christmas things and everyday stuff to put away. Add to that 6 separate rescues in 5 days, and my house is crazy. And I had to open my Etsy shop back up. On top of all it, I got sick while we were in California and I can't seem to get the cold out of my lungs. And it's ridiculously frozen here-- like the high is 17 degrees.

Here's the thermometer on the dashboard yesterday as I was picking up Lily and Kiwi. Ignore the dust. I obviously need to clean out my van again. 17 degrees.

Blah.

So here's an in-depth look at a few of the areas in my house where things sorta exploded.

I've tried to use my shelves to keep things organized. Um, I'm pretty much failing at this.

Once upon a time, I had a nice desk set up for writing at. Now it just holds random light bulbs- are they dead or not? I can't remember-- and random supplies I set down and never put away.

Lily & Leo are on the floor of my bedroom since all the shelf space was taken by other tanks.

We recently moved my crafty room/Etsy shop down into our front room. I think there were, like, 12 seconds when it was actually organized. Now? Nope.

Supplies from Christmas, new Etsy material I haven't listed, a Halloween decoration or two, and more tanks that didn't have anywhere else to be put.

This was originally my "Critical Care" area with Gumby, Sunny (the baby ball python), and Baby Sawyer. It keeps me from using my table for working on Etsy, but it got the tanks off my kitchen counter.

We added 8 foot bookcases in the craft room to store our massive collections of books (I love books!) and the shelves end up housing random reptile equipment too.

My fridge supplies are sorta contained to one shelf in the fridge. So I keep the Critical Care between the Oyster sauce, pineapple juice, and horseradish. Oh and the extra ketchup package from Chick-fil-A.

Also in the kitchen-- in plain sight so I don't forget-- are my baggies of syringes for the sicklies I'm feeding. They are right next to the Christmas goodies that were given to us that we haven't eaten yet.

The living room isn't quite as bad either. I've been trying to move Georgie around and put her in a bigger box by herself. She keeps getting bumped off the list and I haven't gotten around to her yet. I let her free roam a couple days ago and she's quite happy with it.

The chameleon cage-- which I keep promising myself to not use for a long time-- actually sat in the garage for a week and a half! Woo hoo! It is now back on the side table in front of two south facing windows in my living room. Kiwi is having a hard time with her back legs and so I have the bottom of her cage lined with blankets so she can't fall and hurt herself. Just in case, I also have my small cage set out in case I need to downsize her.

The grandfather clock that I inherited when my grandparents died is one of my favorite possessions in my house. I recently just got it fixed so it's back to chiming every 15 minutes. It too gets to share in the rescue chaos. It's my "Shed Storage." Here's sheds from at least 5 different snakes. Under my great horned owl puppet, there's a baggie with a lot of interesting beardie sheds.

Yesterday all of the beardie tanks were cleaned too. . . . Not that you can tell!  Dash did some serious poop painting and Neville has been rearranging his.

Maybe one of these days I'll actually get myself organized, but definitely not until I get over this stupid cold (both the one in my body and the nasty cold outside!) Can't wait until Spring!!

Noel, rescue 164

I named this baby "Noel" which means "birth" in Latin because I hope this is the season for his re-birth.

 My rescue buddy, Heidi, dropped everything to go get him and bring him to me. She sent me pics of him along the way so I could see how skinny he was. She told me how angry she was to pick up him up (the dad didn't want to) because he was ice cold.

He did move around and open his eyes some while they were driving. That was a good sign that he was active once he warmed up.

The first thing I did was weigh him so I knew how many cc's of sterile saline to inject in him. 62 grams! SO tiny.

The second thing I did was offer him a drink in a warm bath. I held his head up because he didn't seem to want to. I dripped water on his nose and tickled his lips to get him to drink. It didn't work. Every so often-- especially when I touched his feet-- he would launch himself out of the bath. When he had his mouth open, I quickly dripped water into it. But it still didn't inspire him to drink on his own. 

I pulled some dead lettuce out of the corner of his mouth. It still had some amount of spit on it which is a good sign that he's not totally dehydrated.

I gave him a saline injection into both of his upper shoulders. It made him look like he had shoulder pads! It's almost impossible to take a pic of that. 

A saline injection between his muscles and skin will help rehydrate the cells of his body more quickly. I will give him one every 24 hours for the next 3 days before I offer him food. The primary focus for critically ill reptiles is always hydration. Once they are hydrated, their bodies can better tolerate food. Giving food (especially protein) to a critically ill bearded dragon is a sure way to kill them quickly.

Poor little Noel didn't even flinch when I put the needle into his back a couple times. :( His movements were all reactionary and largely involuntary. He was obviously in severe stress mode and not able to handle the changes.

While I was waiting for him to arrive, I set up Drake's old tank (completely sanitized, of course) for him. I put Noel onto a newly washed & warm hammock under a light.

Now we leave him alone and wait to see how much fight he has in him still. I will limit my interaction with him so he's less stressed. I will check on him frequently to make sure he's not dead. I call these "death checks" and I do them a lot with critically ill beardies (especially in the middle of the night). Tomorrow around 1 pm, I'll give him another saline injection and see how he does. Two doses of saline will help me know if his kidneys are still functioning or if they've shut down. If the malnutrition and dehydration have shut down his kidneys, then it is only a matter of time before he dies. There is no way to bring back dead kidneys. :(

He has a chance of survival if he can survive the stress of being moved today and if his body starts to process the fluid. But there's no way to know what chances of survival he has. It's just a wait and see thing. There's no other option.

This is the hard part of rescue. Waiting and wondering if you've done enough or if you're efforts qualify as "Too Little, Too Late."

I'll keep you posted.

Update on Drake

Drake has decided his new life goal is to look dead while sleeping. 

I am NOT a fan of this goal. :( 

Everyday I gently poke him to make sure he is alive. 

It is not fun. 

Today I pulled him out. I cleaned his eyes good and gave him some warm Critical Care. Then I put him on his hammock in his basking spot. 

At least for awhile he looked alive. And "for awhile" I mean 8 minutes and then he found a cool spot on the opposite side of the tank and sprawled out into his "sleeping death" position. 

He's not one that I will let bruminate fully and since he's intent on doing that, I think I will wake him up every few days and give him a good dose of Critical Care or baby food. 

My New Favorite Critical Care Mix

I have all three types of  LeFeber's Critical Care powder from my vet***, but I've found its too rich for critically ill reptiles. The high nutritional content stresses their systems more than it provides nutrition. I've started using it when I need to fatten up underweight reptiles or those who are past the critical state. 

My food choice for critical reptiles is simply warmed up baby food. Sweet potatoes for very ill ones and chicken and vegetables for others. Simba got his very first bit of sweet potatoes yesterday. 

Using a syringe, I put some baby food in an ounce measuring glass and heat it up in the microwave for 5 seconds. I put a tiny amount (1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon) of Repashy Calcium Plus in the glass and use a toothpick to stir it in. Then I use syringes to suck up the right amount for each beardie. 

Every day, I feed this mix to my two babies (Dragon and Lucky) and then I sometimes give the leftovers to another beardie. Yesterday, Jessie ate her portion right off the spoon! 

I've had critically ill beardies that have done worse on Critical Care and then improved when I put them on baby food***. I think it's because Critical Care requires so much energy to digest and they don't have enough energy reserves for that. 

***NOTE***-- this is my personal belief and one of two recommendations from my vet that I've chosen to ignore. He highly recommends Critical Care after a reptile is sufficiently hydrated. 

The other recommendation I ignore? I let my tortoises cohabitate. Crazy, I know, but the little ones do better with friends. I realize it's a parasite spreading risk, but I monitor the situation carefully. 

So if you follow me on this, you will be outside a vet's care. After 3+ years and $15,00+ of "training," I feel qualified enough to make these decisions for the reptiles in my care. Follow at your own risk. :) 

Critical Care Mornings

I tried to feed roaches to all 4 of my sickly beardies this morning but only 1 of them ate well. Lil Bit gummed down 3 small roaches. Dory was only able to catch and eat one. Peanut & Mooshy didn't even show interest. 

Back to the Critical Care routine I go. 

Lil Bit gets 1 cc. Peanut gets 2 cc's. Mooshy gets 6 cc's of Critical Care and 6 cc's of Pedialyte.

 All of them are gaining weight slowly. Peanut's jaws are still too rubbery to actually chew roaches. Mooshy doesn't seem to have the strength to chase the roaches. Until they are strong enough to eat on their own, I'm going to continue to force feed them. 

Critical Care Mornings

Once or twice a day I force feed my 3 sickly beardies: MuShu, Bugsy, and Roscoe. Bugsy and MuShu are both sick and not eating well on their own so they get the morning Critical Care (CC). Roscoe gets it twice a day plus a dose of calcium syrup.

I mix the CC with homemade Pedialyte for extra hydration. Each beardie has their own syringe. 

MuShu and Bugsy hate me pushing the syringes in their mouth and fight me. Roscoe doesn't fight but I have to be really careful since his bones are so fragile. 

He hates the calcium syrup so I usually give him some water to flush it out. 

He's got a cute tongue!