Saturday 22nd March 2008 Nastiness and spite

Saturday 22nd March 2008.

A few weeks ago Kadina, one of my bearded dragons suddenly stopped eating. She loves her food so this was out of character for her. Over the period of ten days she dropped weight rapidly and her hip bones began to protrude at the base of her tail. I should have known then what the problem was but she'd fooled me. A lizard in otherwise good health should be able to fast for weeks without much noticeable difference. All the goodness from Kadina was obviously going somewhere fast.

Two weeks ago the mystery was solved. I picked her up and saw distinct and defined eggs protruding through her skin. Kadina my previously 'male' beardie is in fact a gravid female.

I'm kicking myself because at eleven months old she's too young to breed. Apart from that I'd made the decisions that I wasn't going to breed the beardies at all. The market is currently flooded with them and too many are being sold to irresponsible keepers. Beardies retain sperm after coupling so mating a lizard once can result in up to five separate clutches being born that year. They only use as much of the sperm as they need to fertilise their eggs and then they hold the rest for next time. I can only say, thank God we don't do that. A single Bearded dragon can produce over a hundred young, from one breeding, in one season.

Ideally they should be at least eighteen months old before you attempt to breed them. The mother is more prepared for it at that age and any young are far more likely to be strong and do well. However, in the wild Bearded dragons don't sit looking at their watches for the exact moment that they are eighteen months old before having a bit of rumpy pumpy. If they are in good enough condition They 'lift' for the male to be able to penetrate them and if they aren't up to it, they don't.

Kadina is young but her weight and size were both good. She has a wide enough pelvis to allow the eggs to pass and has been supplemented properly form the day we got her. Young lizards breeding early can become egg-bound, this scares me and is a concern, especially with what happened next... but it's only like a teenage human becoming pregnant, we wouldn't wish it for them, we wouldn't want it .. but if it happens you just have to deal with it and nine times out of ten the age of the mother is irrelevant to the birth and outcome of the young. I'd rather this hadn't happened but it has and looking on the positive side at least we know Kadina is definitely female.

Bombo is a certain male, when he started having a go at Kadina a few weeks ago ... and now we know why ...I thought Kadina was male and getting bullied by him. I was actually considering letting Kadina go because two aduly males will not live in harmony with each other. I'm so glad I didn't now.

The day I saw that Kadina was gravid I have her a good check over and estimated that she had about ten days to two weeks to go before she laid her eggs. However Lizards can be unpredictable so, mainly to give her peace of mind, I resettled her in a viv on her own and gave her a large nesting box for when she'd need it.

Last Tuesday (the morning after discovering her pregnancy) I found a single egg lying just outside the nesting box. The egg is small and appears to be infertile as it's yellow in colour and not the pearly white of a healthy fertile egg. However the incubator was set up and ready so I've put it in anyway. All the odds are stacked against anything coming of that egg, but I've seen identical eggs come on and produce young in the past.

I waited all day for her to lay the rest of her clutch. She didn't. She calmly and gracefully took herself off to her basking branch and went to sleep. We're now on Saturday. Since Tuesday she's explored the nesting box a few times and has done some half-hearted digging ... but there's been nothing else.

I'm not very concerned about this. Yes, egg-binding keeps creeping into my mind and scaring me silly. This is where lizards can't lay the eggs and they rot inside them, necessitating a ceaserian to keep the lizard from death. She's still not to term yet and there is no reason to assume that she's going to bind. If she was already egg-bound now then she'd be bleeding and straining to deliver the egs, she'd be exhausted and in a state ...she's fine.

I admit that this is a new one on me. In twenty-five years I've never experienced a multi-layer (the average clutch is eighteen eggs) laying just a single egg two weeks premature. Sometimes a beardie will 'off load' an entire clutch prematurely if mating has occured immediately after ovulation. What happens then is that the eggs are stimulated by the mating to grow, however the sperm doesn't fertilise these eggs so they grow uselessly inside the mother. She will often off load this first, infertile clutch so that the second ovulation can immediately occur and proper fertilisation can take place. In this instance the lizard will lay a second clutch anything from sixteen to thirty five days later. I think that's what's happened with Kadina, but why she only dropped one egg is a mystery.

Because I didn't know what was wrong with her I'd begun force feeding. I've stopped this since discovering her gravidity. It's perfectly normal for a lizard to stop feeding while she's with egg. She looks awful now because the eggs have zapped all of the godness out of her, especially with her being so young .. but she had a healthy and acceptable starting weight and I'm sure she'll be fine. I'm just hoping and praying that this is just a single clutch and that when they are laid she will discharge the rest of the sperm and not go on to produce more eggs ...we'll just have to wait and see.

The egg is still in the incubator, it has not become mouldy, it has not collapsed or deflated, all good signs that there may yet be life in there. I don't hold out much hope for it, it certainly doesn't look healthy going by the colour.

Guess what? I have a cold. It is a bad cold, I am congested to hell, I have a head ache, a sore throat, I am feverish and can't get warm. I feel like crap and then a little bit worse .. am I tucked up all warm and cosy in bed with Russ playing nurse-maid to me? Hell no, I'm at work , growling at my customers and hoping that the end is nigh, even if it's just the end of the working day.

We have to go out tonight. No getting out of it and I so don't feel like it. Mandy is diversifying from the karaoke and is doing the club circuit singing as an artist. Tonight is her debut gig and we have to go along to support her. Her first night is on her own stomping ground in the Gauntlet. This is both good and bad for her. Good because lots of her mates and karaoke singers will be there for her. Bad because she knows everybody and it's going to be extra hard for her if it goes badly. She's got a good voice and I really hope that she does well. I think the biggest thing that's going to hold her back is the fact that she's been a karaoke singer for years, then ran her own karaoke. People know her around town as a karaoke singer. To take it from that level into professional singing for her living is going to hamper her... but she's distinctive and she's good and I'm sure she'll be okay.

Russ doesn't want to go tonight either but his is for an entirely different reason.

I'm absolutely livid and ready for bouncing bonces. It seems I've always got something to be annoyed about lately, I'm turning into a right old stress-head. We went out on Thursday and Mandy took me to one side and said that she needed to have a word with me about a rumour that was doing the rounds. My first reaction was, oh crikey what have I done now? But, surprisingly it's us who are on the receiving end of the rumour, Russ in particular.

Mandy told me that she'd been hearing things about Russ being gay for weeks. I just laughed and said that it didn't surprise me in the slightest. But she was serious, “No Jane, this isn't funny. People are proper talking about him.”

“Oh, Mand, we couldn't care less. Let them say what they like. Russ and I know it isn't true.”

“Don't you even want know where the rumors began and who's keeping them going?”

Now, one thing I will say for Mandy is that he isn't a gossip. I am, I love to hear tit-bits of other people's lives... but Mandy has no time for anything like that. I could see that it was really bothering her.

She went on to say that my cousin Lisa had been in. Mandy had said that we are a lovely couple, or some such gumph and Lisa came back at her with a right mouthful of venom. She said that Russ and I shouldn't be together because he's gay. She said that he's only with me for a roof over his head and because he's using me. She told Mandy that Russ has been with our friend Danny. And she says that she knows that Russ is gay because she knows what he sticks up his backside. She didn't stop at telling Mandy. Over the course of the night she told the landlady of the Gaunt and three of the bar staff.

Well I'm glad that our little lives give Lisa so much to talk about.

Now, how does Lisa know that Russ has had sex with Danny...was she there? I know that my boyfriend and our friend are close. I know that Danny fancies Russ and that they 'flirt' and mess about, and I don't mean in a sexual way. I can't be sure that my boyfriend isn't being unfaithful to me... but I firmly believe that he isn't. I trust him implicitly.

As to knowing that he's gay... how does she know that?

And she knows what he shoves up his arse? Does she? I'd like to know how.

All she knows is that I bought Russ a pony tail butt plug for Christmas. I bought it for him as a joke. Russ is quite vain and I said that having a butt plug with a long black pony tail would give him something to gel and titivate. It was a joke gift and, as far as I'm aware, it has never been used. Another of her little gems is that apparently I have to use sex toys to be able to orgasm.

Is that so? Now if she'd told me that to my face ... then we'd both know it.

I've noticed for a few months that Lisa has become very nasty with Russ. She makes her little jokes and every time she speaks to him it's to deliver a jibe, I've seen them become increasingly barbed. Coincidentally I was talking to Marty about it the other night and saying that Lisa was going to have to pull her head in because she's getting very nasty where Russ is concerned. He didn't say anything at the time but when it all came out from Mandy, Mark confessed that Lisa and her boyfriend, Paul, slag Russ off all the time.

Marty works in a very busy take-away and she asked him in front of all his workmates if Russ had ever sexually abused him. As with everything with Lisa, it was a joke intended only to humiliate Marty in front of his mates .. but I don't find that funny, on many levels. Marty told me that every time either me, or Russ or our home life is mentioned she starts going on about Russ being gay.

I expected Russ to be of the same opinion as me, that Lisa is being ignorant and stupid and that the rumours are not worth bothering about at all ... but surprisingly they have really hurt him. He's very upset about it. He says that he doesn't feel comfortable going out to any of our usual haunts now because he feels that everybody's talking about him and judging us as a couple. His reaction has shocked me more than what Lisa's been saying, normally he's so laid back and nothing rattles him. I wore his shoes to try them out and wondered how I'd feel if somebody was running around town telling anybody who would listen that I'm a lesbian. I honestly think that I'd just play up to it to the hilt. If the truth be told I couldn't care less about the rumours, they are pathetic and stupid and don't bother me in the slightest.

What does bother me is the fact that my boyfriend is deeply upset by this. He's done nothing wrong and he feels ashamed and humiliated. He's a bit wet and effeminate. He doesn't swear or swill back fifteen pints of lager. He's quiet and gentle and particular about things, what's wrong with any of that. He's sensitive and caring and a hypochondriac and a pain in the arse... but is that reason enough to spread rumours about him all over town?

She's getting marriedf in July. Russ is refusing to go to the wedding. I feel that I need to come out in support of him on this one so I'm boycotting it too, though Marty will probably still attend.

I haven't seen Lisa yet and want to say what I've got to say to her to her face, which is more than what's she done for Russ.

One thing I will say, and I realise that it doesn't rule out the possibility of Russ being gay ... but we have a full and active sex life. I know for a fact that Russ is happy with our sex life and that the only problem he might have with it is that we don't have as much time free for sex as we used to.

As to what Russ might or might not insert up his bum ... I think that's his business and nobody elses. We may play with sex toys sometimes, that's par for the course I suppose when you run a sex shop .. but nine times out of ten they stay in their box and Russ and I make love with just what nature has given us to play with. I certainly don't need a vibrator to come and if we use one it's as well as ...not as a replacement for.

Russ feels violated for having aspects of our personal life gossiped about round town, I'm not that bothered, I'm just upset that he's upset. Lisa is becoming more like her mother Leah every day ... she's got a spiteful and nasty mouth on her.