Thursday 28th February 2008. Wow!

Thursday 28th February 2008

My worries were completely unfounded the other night. I got home to find my son slobbing on the sofa. He was in an excellent mood and bore me no grudge or not letting him go out drinking. We went halves on a take-away and had a really nice night with the animals and the telly.

Wow, wow, wow, wow, bloody wow, wow.

What a stunning lizard the red iggy is. We are one hundred per cent certain that he is male so it looks as though I have a definite breeding pair.  Frog is almost certainly female. We'll probably be changing his name Chiquita doesn't suit him, it's too feminine and he's absolutely a manly sort of guy, without checking the usual places you can see just looking at him that he's male.

He is fabulous and surpassed all of my expectations.

The ark is full.

We also have a mac blizzard and super snow ... or is it a super blizzard and mac snow, haven't a clue, but they are pretty leopard geckos. I have to say that the albino whatever it is does look like a walking penis she reminds me of one of those bald rats. It looks as though she's had fur at one time and lost it ... but what a pretty face, gorgeous, gentle black eyes, I love her already but she's very shy. Not surprising after a van journey and five hours in a new viv. I spent ages titivating and getting it ready for them.  The other Leo (lepoard Gecko) one looks like an ordinary Leo to me, but he's in shed ... Dave says that when he's out of shed he's amazing in his yellow. I like him anyway with or without his new coat on. I don't care if he changes after shed or not, he's sweet and he's mine and all the super dooper morphy stuff is pretty much  a foreign language to me. But I will make it my busines to learn. So what do you get if you mix up super, albino, Mac, snow, blizards? I know that the difference between an ordinary 'normal' Leo and a super duper morph is bloody costly. The super Mac Snow should have been in excess of three hundred and fifty pounds and similar for the albino blizzard. I didn't pay anything like that for them, in fact I got the pair for under a hundred and fifty pounds. They are of breeding age and weight and any babies that I get from them will be worth quite a few pennies.

Not having met before it was with some trepidation that I threw them in together.  So far ... nothing, they are both hiding and don't seem to be aware of each other at all.

Initially I put the red Iguana in a three foot viv but it was too small for him so he's upgraded to a four foot and seems happy as can be in there. I will get to the drama and trauma soon. He's had a good explore, he's had a soak in his water dish and after being totally pleasant and malleable when he was cold, now with plenty of heat in his system he's as skittish as hell. I had to go in again to move him into the bigger viv and get uv set up and titivate the smaller one. Believe me the boy has caused me to age ten years in his first hour and has already proven that iguanas are just a whole vat load of trouble that any sane person could well do without.

What an animal though. There are only four breeding pairs of Red Iguanas in the country and I have one of only twenty young produced. Last year at Hamm, which is a huge reptile fair in Germany, Red iggies of an inferior quality to mine were going for eight hundred euros. My red will breed with frog to make a high green/red morph next season. Because I'm listed as having one of these rare animals I'll automatically be offered any unrelated females of a like quality to mine to produce pure reds. I'll also be on the list to buy golden and albino iguanas. My babies from Frog and the red will be highly sought after because although they are a hybrid morph they are 'het' which means that they carry the red gene. At least half of the babies thrown will not only be a het but will also display the full red, his genes being more dominant than Frog's. Of the other half some will be high green only and some will be bloody traffic lights firing off red green and amber.

The Red ten times exceeded my expectations. I paid a stupidly low price for him so based this on what I expected to receive. His pedigree speaks for itself but I couldn't understand why I was offered him so cheaply. What I expected was a putty grey iguana with a reddish tinge and probably a green underbelly.

I was amazed by him when he came out of the box. He is pure 'Accrington' brick red. His cheek disks are a brilliant orange and he has bright amber eyes. He has such a fantastic face, he's slim of nose, broad of head with a large tangerine coloured dewlap. The beast is beautiful.

I'm very concerned about Bali. She's lost a lot of weight and hasn't been herself since before we thought she was gravid. However tonight she wacked off fourteen large locust so I don't think she's about to peg it. I've been giving her critical care but she's still dehydrated. I did see her drinking two days ago, so I know that she's eating (thought not enough) drinking (though not enough) and pooing.  It's weigh in this Sunday so we'll see how she stands compared to last month. Though last month she had a belly like a hot air ballon and weighed a ridiculous amount.

Both Tanimbah and Frog have come up to pretty much normal eating and socialising behavior after being subdued for weeks in the new viv ... so my only concern now is for Bali.  Dave suggested  that she might be a hell of a lot older than I was told and that she might have been bred to hell and back.

To leave you on a cliff hanger, in the next entry I'll tell you about the trouble and expense that bloody red iguana caused me. There were tears less than an hour after owning him.

I love my three new guys ... but my God that red ... WOW!