Dabugman
New Member
Got my first chameleon (4 month old Ambilobe--bright green and blue bars, with some red coming in underneath) a couple weeks ago and thought I would share my experiences:
I have read this board religiously for a month now and I can't thank you all enough for sharing your collective wisdom and experiences. I thought it only fair to let my near catastrophe serve as a reminder to all of us to be careful out there.
Best wishes for the New Year
- I stupidly failed to unplug a ceramic heat emitter I had put on a cabinet and dang near burned my house down
- As it was, it left a bad scortch and caused a lot of smoke right next to my panther's cage
- He seems none the worse for it so far--been about 5 days
- Still eats over 10 small crickets a day and loves to hunt them--he enjoys about 20 fruit flys for dessert--so far he shows no interest in silkworms
- So now, of course, I have his name: Smokey
- My brother the fireman says he has been to several reptile wiring or heat lamp fires--usually iguanas
- So obviously this is a good reminder for me to share with you all to be careful out there
- Did I say that Smokey is freaking AWESOME!!
- He is still pretty shy with me--I've only taken him out to clean his cage
- I've never seen him drink but I mist several times a day and drip--and his urea is nice and white--I understand he may be a shy drinker, waiting for me to be gone
- Which is interesting because he isn't shy about hunting when I am working next to him at my desk
- I have him beside me about 3 feet above me, so he can look down from his "trees" in his cage
- I have two ficus in a screen cage (12x24x24), with 5.0 Reptisun strip and a bask lamp (80-85 degrees on bask branch)
- It gets pretty cold in my home office at night where I have him (in the 50s), so I had the heat emitter on a thermostadt at about 65 degrees, which I will continue to do
- After the smoke incident I misted the heck out of the plants and Smokey--I wonder if I should have given him a shower, but I didn't want to traumatize him further at the time and he seems fine anyway
- Well I presume they have forest fires in Madasgar (just kidding
) Smokey says he feels like he smoked a couple packs of cigarettes and has decided that the smoking thing isn't for him So we promised we would be more careful with the electrical/heat stuff--and you all should too
I have read this board religiously for a month now and I can't thank you all enough for sharing your collective wisdom and experiences. I thought it only fair to let my near catastrophe serve as a reminder to all of us to be careful out there.
Best wishes for the New Year
