Update on the Tyggy household

TyggyToo

New Member
With great sadness I must report the death of Shayna Maideleh. She is sadly missed. The wound in her side was awful, and despite veterinary care, and desperate measures, she was unable to move normally. I made the decision to euthanise her when she would only drink from my hand -- literally out of the palm of my hand. It wasn't right, it wasn't getting better, and she was suffering.

Mort however continues to thrive and grow, and he teaches me much about lizards in general and chameleons in particular. His favorite food by far are silkworms, which I have not really mastered the husbandry of. He also favors superworms, and the occasional butterworm. He is not eating crickets as well as he used to, but I haven't much choice. Silkworms he takes directly from my hand, but the others are put in a cup with Repashy gutload food. They don't usually stay in the cup, but they do come back and chow down.

I started letting him out of his cage on a daily basis. He travels from his cage to the fake ficus to a rope net by a window, to the window itself. If he stayed in this territory we'd all be happy, but he's expanding his domain to the entire room, and this is just a bad idea. He's broken figurines, knocked over plants, and the other day I found him smugly inside the bucket that contains the crickets.

I tell people of the Zen of chameleon husbandry...slow down your breathing, your motions, even your thoughts. Think on chamtime. Sometimes this makes for easy retrieval without hissing, lunging or anxiety. Othertimes he's simply a pissy lizard who wants nothing to do with me and won't come off without being pried loose.

The summer has been nice and muggy, and we kept his and the birds' room that way. Early in the summer the mister broke, and I haven't replaced it yet. As I spend 15-20 min twice a day with the spray bottle, I'm finding that he won't even consider swallowing unless he is breathing very moist air for a few minutes. At this point, he's ready to run over my face to get out of the cage, and I'm feeling like the Big Bad Witch.

Insects have taken over my life even more than Mort. After initially gobbling a dubia or two, I ordered a small tub of 25. Mort went on a hunger strike. I gave up on the dubs, but there were three already running free in his cage. These were joined by two zophobia beetles (what superworms become if they're happy enough) also as pets because he never considered eating them. Over months, his 'pet roaches' got rather large, and at least one was a female, and one a male, and you can guess where THIS story is going. I find it very difficult to kill anything that I've fed. I don't mind them getting eaten, but outright insecticide (the act, not the chemical stuff) is tough. Next on the list were fruit flies in the cricket bucket. Add to this swarm the seed moths that arrived in a jar of Flukers cricket food, and fungus flies that infested the plants, and I've been on an all out war on arthropods in my household. I've idly wondered if a couple of anoles would fix the situation.

Mort.jpg


I hope everyone here is well, and their chams and other companions are thriving.

Sincerely,
Tyg
 
Sorry to hear about your little Shayna Maideleh, I like the zen of Chameleon husbandry idea too. I think male Veileds require more patience than anything I've ever tried to keep alive before.......like they say though 'The parents of boys worry - the parents of girls can only pray'
My boy was just the same with dubias (and phoenix worms, and stick insects, etc. etc. :D)
All the unneeded Dermestids and fruit flies go on my compost heap, I don't like killing them either.....
Hope all your hedgehogs are doing well too :)
 
So sorry to hear of the loss of Shayna Maideleh. I just lost my beloved Chazam over the weekend. I'm sure that she lived a great life!
 
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