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Sunday, February 5, 2017

Update on the Leopard Geckos

Today I decided to only clean the leopard geckos from yesterday once so I could minimize their stress. I started today with the female since she takes more time.

Before I picked her up and started cleaning her wounds, her head had no tilt to it at all. She looked totally normal. SUCH a great sign!



Her normal behavior did NOT last long.



She arched her head back and thrashed around. I know it hurts her, but it must be done. Poor thing. In the bath, she pretended to an alligator and did the "Alligator Death Roll."



I got her wounds cleaned and recoated with antibiotic cream. Then I gave her pain meds and attempted to feed her Critical Care.

Nope. She wasn't having that.


I figured I'd messed with her enough so I put her back in her tank. Her two back feet are so raw that they bled the whole time I had her out.

The male was much, much easier. He's less feisty and has fewer problems. He's also bigger and healthier than the female (no surprise with that).


He got a quick coat of antibiotic cream and his tail soaked in Betadyne solution. I pulled off a few extra pieces of stuck shed too. He looks like he could use a good shed overall to help his skin look better.

You can see that he has NO toes on his back feet. They are rather misshapen and lumpy. In fact, he has only nubs on his front feet too. I think he has only one or two toenails on any of his feet. This fact alone tells me they had negligent care before. You can't leave stuck shed on gecko toes because it cuts off the circulation and kills the toes.



I noticed this morning that my MBD gecko, Gumby, had shed last night, but didn't quite get the shed off his arms. So once I cleaned my hands good from taking care of these two, I pulled Gumby out and soaked off the shed on his toes. One of his toenails popped right off with the shed too.


After we got off his shed, Gumby was happy to take a nice picture for me.



He's such a handsome boy even if he walks on his elbows, has a lump in his back, and has twisted legs. He's a nice boy. ;)

P.S. I'm still thinking of names for the other two. After 180+ rescues, names are hard to come up with sometimes!