Thursday 27th March 2008, may sicken.

Thursday 27th March 2008.

I have put off writing this all day and now can't find anything to do to continue. It's one of those entries that I'd rather not write and certainly don't want anybody else to read, but to not write it and not publish it would be wrong. I'm happy enough to preen when I've done something good. So I must report the bad stuff too.

I've just had two days of misery. I cancelled a family meal out on Easter Sunday because I just didn't feel up to it and if that was bad Monday was even worse.

I have just eaten a ham salad and can feel my gorge rising when I think about it...not the ham salad, that was lovely, what I did on Monday morning wasn't.

But first we return to Sunday. I got up late, we had a lovely lie in until about ten and then I went for a bath before going downstairs. I always have a lie in on a Sunday but am usually downstairs and ready to tackle everything that needs doing by about half nine or ten. This week because I had an extra day off on the Monday I was in decadence mode. I never got downstairs until about eleven. I went around each viv in turn doing lights on and saying good morning to everybody which is the first job of any day. That even precedes brew and fag which is saying something.

I found Bombo, one of my four Bearded dragons lying on the bottom of his viv. His beard was black ( a sign of distress) his mouth was open slightly, gaping. My first thought was that he was dead. I picked him up and he was limp and lifeless. I checked him over thoroughly and although there were no marks on him and absolutely no obvious reason for his condition he was very close to death. He had a faint heartbeat but you could hardly tell that he was breathing at all. I wrapped him up in a tea-towel and rang the vets. As expected I got the answering machine that , after a lengthy message about what determines an emergency, gave me an emergency number. I rang them still cuddling Bombo, the phone seemed to ring for ages. While it was ringing Bombo lifted his head, opened his mouth wide gasped once and died.

I have no explanation for this.

One months ago he was my alpha Beardie, he was big, bright and in excellent condition. He had lost six grams at least weigh in, but six grams is absolutely nothing, it's a single teaspoon of sugar. It's the breeding season, he's active. I can honestly say that he was a poster boy lizard. Everybody seeing him remarked how beautiful he is and what a lively character. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that lizard.

Losing one of them is always bad. You expect it with tiny babies. The mortality rate for young lizards is sixty percent, that's why they have such large clutches. But Bombo was a year old. When you know why one of them has died it's awful, but not knowing is absolute torture. I have three theories.

One: he's eaten something that he shouldn't have done while he's been out playing and has either has a slow choke or it's lodged inside him. Human hair is one of the biggest killers of bearded dragons in captivity. They love the stuff, eat it and it twists around their intestines and kills them. This usually takes a matter of weeks though, it's not usually a 'here today gone tomorrow' thing, unless he ate something larger and choked several hours after going back in his viv, because he was fine at bed time. I always run the brush over the floors before they come out ... but there are nooks and cranny, corners and things that it just wouldn't be viable to furniture move every single time the lizards came out to play.

Two: He may have dropped from one of the top branches in the upper layer of the monster viv, have fallen right through the trap door and landed, possibly on something hard at the bottom, a fall of eight foot. Because of the positioning of the branches in the viv, he would have to be strategically positioned for this to happen. Normally they can only fall a max of four foot because of the dividing shelf. He would have to have been positioned right over the trapdoor when he fell, and even then to avoid the ladder and fall the full eight feet would be highly unlikely because the ladder runs right across the opening of the trap door.

Three: that he may have been born with Adeano virus, this is a virus that only affects Bearded dragons. They are born with it, there is no cure and infected beards are either sick with the virus and die, or they carry it without symptoms and pass it on to their young. Reputable breeders will not sell Beardies without first having them tested for AV. I have my other beardies booked in to be tested on Wednesday because if Bombo did die of AV then the other three are either carrying it, or they are going to develop sypmtoms and we'll lose them all. Again this is one that would tend to starve the lizard off over a period of time, it's not usually an overnight killer. Thank God it's peculiar to Beards and can't kill off the whole troop. The reason that I think it may be AV will become clear shortly.

I can't think of any other reason that a perfectly fit, happy, healthy bearded dragon would suddenly drop dead. If it was because he fell, then it would never have happened if I hadn't put them into such a massive viv. If he choked on my hair I'd never forgive myself, and if it's Adeano we may well lose the other beardies. All possibilities are horrible and I can't get the picture of him dying out of my head.

Worse was to come.

Monday morning I got up and found Kadina in an identical state to the position that I'd found Bombo in the morning before. She was lying in her nesting site, spread eagled on the vermiculite. She was already dead.

The night before she'd been calm. Kadina differed from Bombo in that she looked awful. The weight has dropped from her. This is normal and usual when lizards are gravid (pregnant) however overnight her eyes had sunk deep into her skull as she'd dehydrated beneath the heater. Like Bombo she'd died with her mouth open gaspiing for air.

The obvious answer is that Kadina had died because I'd been foolish enough to mistake her genitalia for that of a male's and had left her in with the real male so having her become gravid too young. Maybe she just wasn't up to laying eggs and they had sapped just that bit too much out of her. Personally I've never bred a beardie under two years old, eighteen months is the recommended minimum ... but I know lots of people who have. More often than not it runs hell out of the female but she goes on to lay the eggs and make a full recovery.

Kadina just wasn't up to it.

But if that's the explanation, then why Bombo too? It can't be pure co-incidence that I lost two lizards in identical circumstances twenty four hours apart.

It's what I did next that really sickens me. I decided to perform a makeshift autopsy cum caesarian on Kadina to try and rescue the eggs and get some answers.

I was emotional and I felt that if I could at least save the eggs then they wouldn't have died in vain. If the AV test results come back positive this week then the eggs would all have to be destroyed which would break my heart again. But if I could save just one of those eggs then that would be a little part of both Bombo and Kadina that I could keep.

I had no moral or religious qualms about desecrating my dead pet, to me the dead thing in my hands was just a carcass. Kadina had gone and the thing that was left was just an empty shell that she'd lived in.

I had to have a coffee and cigarette to psyche myself up for what I was about to do.

I laid a thick wad of towels down on my work station in the dining room. I covered the entire station and the towels with several layers of cling film. Then I split ten rubbish bin liners and laid them over everything. The last thing I wanted was to shed my old mate Salmonella all over the place. I put my biggest baking tray on top of my working area. Afterwards I could just scoop everything up and throw the lot out. I laid out twenty wax worm tubs filled with damp vermiculite and indented in the middle to lay the eggs on. I figured that twenty would be more than enough.

I laid Kadina flat on her back in the center of the baking tray and got cold feet. What if she wasn't really dead? (she was as stiff as an ironing board) What if she was just in a coma? What if she came to when I had all of her insides hanging out. What if I couldn't do this to my beloved, dead pet after all. Every time I looked at her tears re-filled my eyes.

I needed another fag.

If I was going to do it I had to get on with it. Kadina could have been dead for up to ten hours. The eggs inside her might already be ruined, but every second wasted was a second longer that they'd lain in a dead host without a blood supply.

I knew it was going to smell. I ran upstairs and rubbed Vicks under my nose. To further block the smell and prevent inhaling any airborne diseases I tied a tea towel around my face. The only thing in the house that I thought might do the trick was Russ' three inch swiss army knife. It was only a miniature and I had no idea if it would be up to the job. It had a little pair of scissors attached and a tiny knife the size of a small nail file. I wore a pair of my old latex work gloves that I keep for hair dying days.

I was ready and it was now or never. I took my last deep breath and prepared to cut.

I pressed down with the point of the knife in the lizard's sternum. I can't call her Kadina while I'm writing this. I didn't know how much force to use. The point refused to penetrate. I decided to change tactics. I opened the tiny scissors that were literally only a couple of inches long. I didn't hold out a lot of hope for them. I pulled together the lose skin at the top of the lizard's throat and made a cut. It wasn't deep enough and I had to go over it several times to get an opening large enough to get the point of the scissors into. I think that was probably the worst bit. I can't describe how horrible that first cut was.

The scissors were actually surprisingly sharp. At this point I was only cutting skin deep. I cut away the skin from her throat down to her pubis being very careful not to go any deeper over her abdomen where she was like a bag of marbles. I felt the blade of the scissors gliding over each separate egg. Once I had a lengthways cut in the skin I made two more from middle to back effectively quartering the skin over her front. I peeled the four flaps of skin back to reveal the muscle and sinews that made up the rest of her. So far there had been no blood at all, obviously with no heartbeat it had begun to coagulate, and there had been no fluid and very little smell had managed to get through my mask. The muscle and stuff was a horrible grey dead and unhealthy looking slimy mass that I had to cut through next.

With the next cut things burst and popped and 'stuff' poured out of her and the smell was horrendous even through the vics. Now I could see the cold, hard reality of just how much having young really does take out of a lizard, any lizard. Her heart was pushed up under her sternum. Her liver was squished right over to her left hand side. All the other organs had been forced downwards to almost between her legs. Every millimetre of available space inside the cavity of that lizard was taken up by eggs. I was delighted to find that they were still warm. Now I had to move very quickly because I was about to expose the eggs to the outside air. I went in with my fingers and tentatively tried to grab hold of one. It surprised me to find that they were on two strings, very much like a link of sausages. I pulled one egg and an entire string of them came away from the mother. The were attached to her by membranes on either end, but at least I only had to make two cuts on each string through the foul stuff. Soon I had two string of eggs lying on the baking tray beside their dead mother. I stepped up the game, until this moment I hadn't been able to assess the condition of the eggs as they were covered with a membrane identical to a sausage skin. I had to cut this skin away from each egg now that they were free of the mother and then squeeze them gently one at a time to release them from the membranous sack.
One egg out of fifteen retrieved had collapsed. One egg from a week earlier was still in the incubator giving us a total of sixteen eggs. Sadly I don't hold out a lot of hope for any of them. The new ones taken from Kadina after death look far more healthy than the original one. That one was quite yellowed. These are far more white than yellow but they still have a yellow tinge to them which is indicative of infertile eggs. Otherwise they appeared perfect.

They had been exposed to the cold air for probably about ten minutes by the time I got them out, cleaned, potted and into the incubator. This may well prove to be too long. Also it is vital that lizard eggs go into the incubator in the position that they are laid, in other words embryo side uppermost. They must not be turned because it kills the young. Because they were riven from their mothers belly and not laid, I had no idea which way was up and could only take pot luck.

It's one of the most macabre and gruesome things that I have ever done ... but I have no regrets about doing it and am so glad that I did. It will be nothing short of a miracle if even one of those eggs hatches (though it doesn't work like that it will be almost all of them or nothing) I so want to have something to show for Bombo and Kadina.

I had to go back to the lizard cut open on my workstation. I hadn't finished yet. There wasn't much that I could look for, I'm not experienced enough at lizard anatomy to know what to see for abnormalities, this was my first ever autopsy, but there was one nasty job that I wanted to do. I carefully cut open the intestine first. There was nothing blocking it. She had no hair twisted around it. There were no parasites feeding within it.

Next I cut open the Bowel and spread it out on the baking tray at the side of her to dissect it. I was looking primarily or worms .. there was nothing, not a worm, not a parasite, not a maggot, of course he may have had microscopic infestations but nothing visible to the human eye which was good enough for me. This was fantastic news. If she didn't have parasites then neither do any of the lizards who have come in contact with her recently.

I scooped what was left of my pet into a carrier bag and tied the handles. It was the first time I'd seen her face since I'd started, it broke my heart. Putting her back into the centre of the tray I covered it, my gloves and all the debris with the bin bags. Then I wrapped the entire parcel in the cling film and a couple of rounds more. My towels, the tray and everything I'd used, all wrapped around Kadina double coated in cling film and bin bags went into the dusbin.

I spend the next hour spraying and disinfecting everything. I felt contaminated for the rest of the day.

Yesterday morning I took my two remaining Bearded Dragons to be tested for Adeano Virus, I'll have the results in five to seven days.. They are both girls. They are both in excellent health. They are showing no signs of disease and at worst are carriers, which only means that I can never breed from them which I had no intention of doing anyway. Though that might change if they are AV free and the eggs from Bombo and Kadina fail as expected. The vet said that if they were going to exhibit symptoms they wouldn't look anywhere near as good as they do and that she'd be very surprised if they went on to become ill.

On principle I have no intention of breeding the Beards, but if these tests come back virus free, then the value of them as a breeding commodity will have shot up. The cost of any babies from them would also go up by twenty pounds a head. That's why it's always in a breeders interests to have them tested for AV. The cost of testing one lizard was a hundred and ten pounds. I don't want to breed my girls, but if I did I could reclaim that loss on my first clutch and increase profit on sixteen eggs by three hundred and twenty pounds. I don't ever want to see a pregnant lizard again after seeing what it took out of Kadina.

The vet had reassured me somewhat, but I still have it at the back of my head that Kadina's pregnancy was young but normal and had nothing to do with her death. Even the vet said that although she was young, her starting weight and condition at the time were fine and merely having babies shouldn't have killed her. In the wild Bearded Dragons will almost always breed in their first full season as Kadina did.

If this is the case ...what the hell did kill two of my healthiest lizards?

To end on an upbeat and happy note and to rid my mind of those awful images again ... All of my current pets are in tip top condition as of this moment. None of them seem unhappy, unhealthy or are causing me to worry in any way. Come on now, I've had my share of the bad stuff, give me a break.