hallenhe
Avid Member
My male Ambilobe, Thaxter, died on Friday, a couple months shy of his fifth birthday. Here is a montage showing his development from when I first got him at just about three months old to well into adulthood, and a lot of his color phases.
Here he is on his favorite perch, the pink Tiffany lamp in the living room.
I took him in for a vet check at four years old (last June), and blood work, specifically calcium-phosphorus ratio, suggested some decline of kidney function to the vet, so he was given oral calcium supplements, and I was told to keep him well-hydrated. He got plenty of outdoor basking time over the summer and until it became too cold in Michigan. In November, he went in to the vet again for a burn on his tail that had become infected; the vet cultured the bacteria and put him on a ten-day course of injectable pipericillin; together with the application of some topical antibiotics, the tail healed. As he has aged, he became more inclined to fall (particularly as he would grip tightly onto his elbows with his hind feet), and we lowered his climbing vines and limited his movements to areas that weren't particularly high and had soft landing places. He declined in shooting ability (still able to use the tongue, but only able to shoot accurately from a couple inches), but didn't lose appetite, and continued drinking like a champ, loving his spritzings.
Last Wednesday I took him for a drink at the faucet (he loved running water, and I made sure it was neither too hot or too cold); he eagerly took a moderate drink, then began showing signs of distress several minutes afterwards, tilting his head back, opening and closing mouth, inflating gular crest. This resolved with his throwing up; I took this as an indication that some water went down the wrong way.
Thursday and Friday he would drink from his mistings, but showed no interest in food and was generally listless; also seemed weaker than he had been. I took him to the vet Friday morning. There was noting unexpected in the blood chemistry - calcium values were good (from the supplementation), phosphorus had crept up, which wasn't great but was somewhat expected based on what the vet expected from his kidneys. I was given aluminum hydroxide to bind some of the excess phosphorus (only to be used once he was eating properly again). He gagged while at the vet's office, and the vet was able to look down his throat and obtain a swab from the stomach, which contained many more rod-shaped bacteria than expected, and some white blood cells, indicating inflammation. Vet put him on injectable Baytril and subcutaneous fluid therapy to overhydrate and get the kidneys flushing again; vet gave first injections in the office and we went merrily home.
When I came home from work, he was dead. I brought him in for necropsy; cause of death appears to be septicemia (visible septicemic white patches on liver and heart (pericardial sac)) from this bacterial infection. There was nothing less clean about his environs and feeders than ever, and the vet thinks that a very low-level population of bacteria may have remained from the tail infection last fall, and been able to explode for some reason or other as the immune system declined with the slow decline of the kidneys. The kidneys did show signs of disease, as predicted; lungs looked good and heart and liver would have been healthy aside from the septicemia.
The vet has agreed to forward me the full records of his blood chemistry data (at 21 months [healthy], 48 months [beginning kidney damage], and 57 months [day of death]), and I will post those in a separate thread once I have them, as I have seen very little blood chemistry data for panthers out there, and it might be useful.
I hope to be getting another chameleon within the next couple weeks. Working, as I do, in a biology lab, I have autoclaves and will sterilize all Thaxter's bendy vines and branches this week, and will be doing some repotting and trading out unhappy plants before the newbie comes in.
Here is a closing picture of Thaxter.
Here he is on his favorite perch, the pink Tiffany lamp in the living room.
I took him in for a vet check at four years old (last June), and blood work, specifically calcium-phosphorus ratio, suggested some decline of kidney function to the vet, so he was given oral calcium supplements, and I was told to keep him well-hydrated. He got plenty of outdoor basking time over the summer and until it became too cold in Michigan. In November, he went in to the vet again for a burn on his tail that had become infected; the vet cultured the bacteria and put him on a ten-day course of injectable pipericillin; together with the application of some topical antibiotics, the tail healed. As he has aged, he became more inclined to fall (particularly as he would grip tightly onto his elbows with his hind feet), and we lowered his climbing vines and limited his movements to areas that weren't particularly high and had soft landing places. He declined in shooting ability (still able to use the tongue, but only able to shoot accurately from a couple inches), but didn't lose appetite, and continued drinking like a champ, loving his spritzings.
Last Wednesday I took him for a drink at the faucet (he loved running water, and I made sure it was neither too hot or too cold); he eagerly took a moderate drink, then began showing signs of distress several minutes afterwards, tilting his head back, opening and closing mouth, inflating gular crest. This resolved with his throwing up; I took this as an indication that some water went down the wrong way.
Thursday and Friday he would drink from his mistings, but showed no interest in food and was generally listless; also seemed weaker than he had been. I took him to the vet Friday morning. There was noting unexpected in the blood chemistry - calcium values were good (from the supplementation), phosphorus had crept up, which wasn't great but was somewhat expected based on what the vet expected from his kidneys. I was given aluminum hydroxide to bind some of the excess phosphorus (only to be used once he was eating properly again). He gagged while at the vet's office, and the vet was able to look down his throat and obtain a swab from the stomach, which contained many more rod-shaped bacteria than expected, and some white blood cells, indicating inflammation. Vet put him on injectable Baytril and subcutaneous fluid therapy to overhydrate and get the kidneys flushing again; vet gave first injections in the office and we went merrily home.
When I came home from work, he was dead. I brought him in for necropsy; cause of death appears to be septicemia (visible septicemic white patches on liver and heart (pericardial sac)) from this bacterial infection. There was nothing less clean about his environs and feeders than ever, and the vet thinks that a very low-level population of bacteria may have remained from the tail infection last fall, and been able to explode for some reason or other as the immune system declined with the slow decline of the kidneys. The kidneys did show signs of disease, as predicted; lungs looked good and heart and liver would have been healthy aside from the septicemia.
The vet has agreed to forward me the full records of his blood chemistry data (at 21 months [healthy], 48 months [beginning kidney damage], and 57 months [day of death]), and I will post those in a separate thread once I have them, as I have seen very little blood chemistry data for panthers out there, and it might be useful.
I hope to be getting another chameleon within the next couple weeks. Working, as I do, in a biology lab, I have autoclaves and will sterilize all Thaxter's bendy vines and branches this week, and will be doing some repotting and trading out unhappy plants before the newbie comes in.
Here is a closing picture of Thaxter.
