Sunday 18th May 2008

Sunday 18th May 2008.

I’m still reeling over the death of Giza. I can’t decide what’s worse coping with nursing them through a long illness with humongous vet bills and endless sleepless nights and worry as you watch them slowly drift away in front of your eyes… or just walking through the door and finding a previously fit healthy animal dead. At least with Giza I know exactly how and why. There are no unanswered questions. I’m not wondering if my animal died because I did something wrong. That’s conclusive, I did! My only question is, did he suffer? Was it instant? The simple avoidability of this accident is driving me nuts. All day long I’m mind-beating myself with the ‘what if’ game. What if I’d come home myself after taking Stoker to the vets? What if I’d just realised that he was big and heavy enough to tilt the statue? What if I hadn’t put that damned statue in there in the first place and I always come back to the same answer. Giza would still be with us now.

Something stupendously wonderful has happened today. If I wasn’t emotionally numbed from losing Gi, I would be bouncing around all over the place. Actually nothing new has happened at all, it’s been happening all along but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Today for the first time ever I saw Falcon, my red iguana, eating his salad. He’s been gaining weight and bulking out nicely so obviously he’s been eating but knowing he’s doing it and actually seeing him are two completely different things. Until now I’ve never seen him eat or drink a thing of his own accord. Now I’m not just suspecting that he’s doing well, I know that he is.

This herpetology lark is just a game. It’s ying and yang, you lose some and then you win some and for every low it seems there’s a high lurking in one of the vivs to help bring me back up again. The heartache is desperate and the pain each and every time I lose one is intense. The waste of money is scandalous but when it all goes right and you take one of these temperamental creatures and know that they are completely happy with their lot which is borne out by their physical and psychological condition the feeling of satisfaction and pride is second to none.

Shilma continues to do well. Mindy said that I have to prepare myself for a shock when I see her because she still looks as though she’s been to hell and back, but she’s confidant that she’s turned a corner now and is going to continue to improve. I just hope and pray that she’s right. Shima has been force-fed for some time now and I know from long experience that reptiles rarely come back from that and return to eating for themselves. I just want her home so that I can see for myself how well she’s doing. Mindy said that she’s getting stronger because she’s fighting the feeding more and has begun crocodile rolling again. When you hold her she rolls over and over in your hand like a crocodile in an attempt to get free. When she does this you have no option but to loosen your hold or she would literally break her spine. Mindy is having to wait for her to tire of these shenanigans before she can feed her. How long can I allow Shilma to go through that? It’s a vicious circle, when they are sick to the point of dying force-feeding is easy because they don’t have any strength to fight it. Once the feeding begins to take effect and they re-gain some strength from the nutrients, their fighting instincts and ability return and therefore the stress level inflicted on the animal escalates. I can keep Shilma alive by force feeding, technically as long as I can get the correct amount of nutrition inside her by force I can keep her alive indefinitely but what life will it be for her if we have to go through hell every night to get that food down her. Until I get her home I can’t make any assessment of how likely she is to regain her normal life. So we go on, taking things day by day until she is well enough to make the journey back.

My Sunday girls are still keen and coming. Ruby is fantastic, if I lost her now it would be a great loss to the animals. Emma is more hit and miss. She often has other things that she wants to do on a Sunday and then I don’t see her. She hasn’t built the same rapport with the gang that Ruby has either, and she’s very timid of some of them, even the likes of the frills who are quite big I suppose but as gentle as lambs. But she’s still a great asset, even if she only gives the beards and Roma some cuddles and attention when she comes, every little helps.

It was a bit mad today because they brought a new girl with them. Natalie is very loud. She’s excitable and I had to constantly make her aware of where the animals were in relation to her. She’s keen and interested and asked a million and three questions which is great, but the decibel level of having the three of them and the ensuing chaos made it all a bit unfeasible. I couldn’t let more than one lizard each out at once because there were just too many feet in the room. Doors were opening and closing, voices battling for supremacy and I wasn’t able to leave the girls to it as I normally do to get on with my own morning routine because I had to watch them in case of accidents. Having three girls rather than two completely changed the dynamics of the room, everybody seemed louder and whereas I’ve got a nice routine established with Ruby and Emma, once Nat came into the mix it went out of the window. So I’ve suggested that they work out a rota whereby I get two of them every week. I think this will work well because it means that every third week they each get a Sunday off. Ruby might struggle with this because she doesn’t actually want to take a week off and said that she really missed coming while we were on holiday. I’m finding it difficult not to show favouritism to Ruby. Because it’s my animal’s welfare at stake it’s impossible to be completely impartial and I will often give direction. For instance if they were going into the water dragon’s viv I’d ask Emma to bring out Chi and Shang and Merriden and leave Comma and Eden to Ruby because they can be skittish. I class Ruby as my ‘head keeper’ if you will, and Emma and now Natalie too must feel this, but Ruby has been one hundred percent consistent. She comes every single week that she’s supposed to and sometimes at other times too. Because she’s got more hours in than Emma, her experience has overtaken the other girl’s. Poor Natalie has come in at grass roots and has to learn everything and I suppose that’s just the way it is. I do worry that I’m giving out unfair signals of favouritism though.

I was unpleasant to Jessy tonight. In fact I was very unpleasant to her and downright nasty. She came around with Nigel and her two daughters. Jess is a two-minute expert on any given subject. Reptiles are her latest ‘thing’. I’m afraid I don’t take criticism well. The conversation went exactly like this.

“Jane, I’m a bit concerned about Cairo.”

“Yes, me too mate. I’m worried sick about her. She’s going to be lost without the big guy.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve been on the internet learning about uromastyx and you’re keeping them wrong.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I think this is why Giza might have died. I think he was trying to get out.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you see, it says on every single website that they need a viv that is at least six foot long.”

“Um hmm, that’s right.”

“Well you’ve only got yours in a small viv and that’s wrong. I’ve printed off the information for you. Also they should be kept on a minimum of six inches of sand. I think you need to look at it. Do you know that you should soak them in a bath of water for twenty minutes once a week?”

I felt it. It began somewhere in the region of my spleen and bubbled and curdled as it rose. I tried to make it go away. Really I did. When my first words came out very quietly instead of at a roar. I knew the temper was going to get the better of me.

“I see.”

“Well are you going to look at it?”

“I’d love to, thank you. I’m always happy to read anything concerning my animals. You can never have too much knowledge can you?”

“Oh, I’m glad you’ve taken it so well. I thought you might think that I was interfering; I’d hate you to lose anymore of them if it can be avoided. I’m surprise you didn’t look on these internet sites yourself, they are very informative. I’ve learned loads about them. I might get one myself.”

“Really?”

“Yes, either that or maybe a bearded dragon.”

“Wouldn’t bother if I were you.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s one thing reading a few words on a care sheet, but it’s quite different when you have to actually look after them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, did your care sheet tell you that, for no apparent reason if you get uros over the hump of the settling period and they establish a good feeding and care routine that often, about six months after you get them, they suddenly go into fast and die?”

“No.”

“How about brumation? Did it say anything about that?”

“Oh yes, the site said that you have to cool them off for so long in winter.”

“Do you think I should do that with Cairo this year then.”

“Definitely, it’s essential if you want to breed them. What you need to do is…” she went on to tell me and I listened patiently.

“Right, so do you think I should put her into full hibernation then? Maybe that will be better.” She looked confused now and I could see the cogs turning as she searched for the best advise to give.

“Er… er, no. I wouldn’t. I’d just um… drop their daylight hours for a few weeks, I think that’s what the site said.

“Okay, you’ve had your say. My turn. I’ve just lost one of my lizards and I’m feeling a bit raw and sensitive at the moment. The last thing I need is some armchair expert telling me how to look after my animals.”

“But ..but ..but”

“But nowt. Brumation … yes? It would kill Cairo, she’s only in her first season she hasn’t got enough fat reserve in the base of her tail yet to see her through a bromating winter. Now then, on to what I’m doing wrong. You’re right a uromastyx should be in a six foot viv. Mine will be in a bigger one than that because six foot is the minimum requirement. But Jess, they are only a few inches long at the moment. Do you know what would happen if I put two baby euros in a massive space? They would curl up and die. They are only babies and they need to be able to see the boundaries of their territory. Give them too vast a space and they become stressed and would go into a fast. Giza could have coped with a bigger viv because he was outgoing and confidant but Cairo wasn’t ready for it. When she can cope with more space, she will be given it.

As for the substrate, again you’re right, they do prefer sand and until last week they were on it, with a big enough depth to furrow out their dens … however the sand caused problems for them, again because they are only young and I made the decision to move them onto bark chippings for the time being otherwise we were heading for serious foot infections. As you will know from your reading uros don’t drink water, they take all of the fluid they need from their food. Because mine are still young they actually climb into their feeding dish and get the wetness of the food between their feet. They then go back onto the sand and the sand sticks to the sensitive skin of their feet. They bask and the sand dries and forms little bobbles on their toes, on a bad day when they’ve been trampling about in tomato or soft fruit their entire feet became encased in balls of sand which dries hard like concrete and even soaking won’t soften it. This would eventually cut off the circulation to their feet and could lead to gangrene. If I’d left them on sand substrate they could have lost their feet. So thanks for your expert opinion but can I suggest that you come back and lecture me again after you’ve been involved with reptiles for over twenty years and have maybe actually owned one. Oh and by the way, if you want to borrow some really good books on uros, I’ve bought the best on the market. I haven’t owned uros before these two, they were a new species to me so I damned well made sure that I had the best information available to be sure that I was getting it right. You know what? Giza didn’t die because his viv was too small, he died because I put an ornament in that he outgrew and I shouldn’t have done, but hey, thanks for making me feel worse than I already did. ”

She left in a huff. And I sat over a coffee and several fags in a blaze of indignation. How dare she? Who the hell is she to tell me how to look after my animals? I ranted and raved and felt very superior. Haven’t I studied reptiles all of my adult life? How can she dare to assume that she knows better than me after reading a few (probably inaccurate) internet care sheets? My feathers were so ruffled that they were knitting into a boa. Huh, cheek of the woman. She has a hamster there that she freely admits hasn’t been cleaned out for a month because it belongs to her daughter and she doesn’t see why she should… and she has the audacity to tell me how to keep my animals.

Why did this bother me so much?

What if she’d been right? What if she could have told me something important to my animal’s welfare that I didn’t know? She was only trying to be helpful (and maybe lord it over me in the process) why did I feel the need to stomp all over her? I should have taken her advice in the spirit of friendship and then pointed out more kindly why I’ve chosen to do things this way.

Am I that insecure and that unsure about my own abilities with these animals that I have to do that? Or is it deeper than that? Maybe what really enraged me wasn’t the fact that she was criticising my husbandry but the fact that she said she was going to get a reptile. Do I want to be the only herpetologist in the village? Is this an exclusive club that only I have rights to? She couldn’t look after a reptile properly. She’d kill it in a month … but what if she didn’t? What if she got a hundred reptiles, what does it matter? Does her having them mean that mine are any less cared for? What if every one of those hundred reps thrived and grew big and strong and beautiful and she got everything absolutely right while I still had my runs of bad luck and my accidents and my disasters … would that make her better than me?

Bingo!