Wednesday 23rd April 2008

Wednesday 23rd April 2008

Just thought I'd give a bit of an update on Falcon, my red iguana. He's doing absolutely brilliantly.

Bad bit first, he's damaged his nose, which I'm very disappointed about. When he skits he doesn't look where he's going and ploughs into anything in his path, this is a lot better than he used to be when we first got him, much better, in fact he's calming down nicely but he still schitzes when you try to catch him ... still, better a bit of nose damage than brain damage if his nose didn't make contact first .. stupid lizard.

Other than that he is spectacular. I am dying to weigh him. I had never seen him eat  or drink anything (still haven't voluntarily.) Because of the stress involved I don't like force or assist feeding ... At weigh in last month he'd lost weight. This really concerned me. He weighed in at 171 grams ... a week later he was 175 but he did look very slender, though he has always had plenty of good muscle tone.

I'm currently force feeding one of my leos and this week I figured, in for a penny in for a pound and do Falcon too.

I'm dying to weigh him but am determined to wait until the due day this Sunday. I'll be happy with anything over 180 but I'll be delighted if we can hit the 200 mark ... if he's less than 170 I'll be pis... disappointed! I am trying to improve my potty mouth.

He almost needs no help at all to eat and once you get the food into his mouth he chomps down happily.

Day one he took 6 wax worm.

Day two he took one rat pup and 6 wax worm.

Day three and every day since then he's taken two huge rat pups and 6 waxies.

Today he took three rat pups and 6 waxies.

It's only been a week but what a difference in him.  Catching him stresses him out, but the feeding doesn't bother him at all and I think any day now he'll be snapping at my fingers to get them.

From day one he's been the most genlte lizard ever, he's never once bitten and doesn't even tail whip, though he will sometimes swish it when you finally manage to grab Him. There isn't a nasty bone in that lizard's body, he's got a beautiful nature and once he's caught he'll sit quite happily and let me stroke him for ages.

The only problem with him is that I hate catching him. He goes absolutely mental and runs blind pelt into anything in his way. This is how he damaged his nose he ran full tilt into a bulb guard. I do worry that one day he's going to seriously hurt himself .. but he's a lot better than he was. His poor nose looks awful but it's clean and healed well. He did it about a month ago and luckily we've had no infection or problems with it. It's just a shame that he came to me a hundred perfect and now he looks as though he's been boxing.  He's still gorgeous though.
I have become seriously worried about Shilma, my female blizzard. she has always eaten, but while Kashmir has thrived she's consistently lost weight. When she came to us she was in prime breeding condition at 64 grams. Last month she was 52 grams.  when I weighed her last week she was just forty eight grams.

When she came to me she was filled out and looked fantastic. Now she is still physically active and doesn't seem to have changed in any way apart from losing weight but she's a straight line from head to tail tip with no definition at all.

I have tried every trick in the book to force feed her and she is a nightmare. she's so delicate that I'm terrified of hurting her. There is so little of her to get hold of. She fights and twists and certainly doesn't lack the energy to squirm. Every single time I've fed her I've expected to find her dead afterwards with the stress of it.

Last week I watched her hunting. She stalked four locust but as soon as they moved out of her way she seemed to be frightened and backed away from them. I pulled the legs off one (yes I know, horrible thing to do but a standard herpetolgogical procedure that doesn't excuse cruelty but is sometimes the only way to get an animal to eat.) so that it could only crawl but then she showed no interest in it at all and when I dropped it right in front of her she'd turn away and look in the other direction. She used to take crickets and locust from the tongs ... now she won't take them at all.

I separated her off into a one foot plastic container. I put this on top of Stokers viv because his heater was directly below the tub and stays on twenty four hours. I put the tub half over the heater and gave her a hide that she could climb on as well as get in so that she wouldn't get too hot.

she seemed to like being in the tub and came out to mooch around every single night. I put her plenty of live food and a pinkie in every night and every morning it would still be there. I did this for four nights before giving up.

I hate force feeding, to me it's an absolute last resort and although she seems perfectly okay in herself I wanted to tackle her weight before she did weaken.

The first thee times I tried to force feed her were disastrous. she got stressed. I got stressed and I got nothing at all down her. I could get it in her mouth no problem at all ... but once she had the opportunity she'd just spit it out again. I tried pinkies, I tried waxies. I stretched wax worms across her mouth and held onto them so that she had no choice but to take them into her mouth. I opened her mouth with forceps and forced them in ... and I waited for her to gape at me in anger and chucked a mouse pink in ...  they were all the same, she'd hold them. she'd glare at me .. and then she'd spit them out.

On Sunday I had my Sunday girl to help me. I got her to hold Shil while I attempted to feed her. I was so impressed with Ruth, this girl is a school kid. she's a vegetarian on humanitarian grounds, but God love her she never once flinched. Ruth got bitten twice and Shilma can give a nasty little nip that resulted in quite a bit of bleeding.

We tried waxies to no avail, Ruth and I ended up covered in them.

Next I tried a pinkie mouse. I got it into the lizard's mouth with no trouble at all. Shilma bit down in temper, the mouse exploded from the stomach and poor Ruth got splattered in mouse guts. Shilma spat it out. I picked it back up and forced it in again. Shilma bit its head off, shook her head, spat and Ruth was sitting with mouse guts and a head on one leg and what was left of the body on the other. I picked up the body folded it in two and forced it into her mouth again. She spat but had a small amount of internal detritus on her mouth which she licked off. For all of our efforts Shilma had taken one tiny bit of mouse gut. She was upset. We were upset and I was getting nowhere.

I made up a mix of chicken and veg baby food with crit care and a bit of water to get it down a syringe. I used one mil syringes. I forced the first one well into her mouth. she bit down on it and I squirted the food into her mouth. Success, she swallowed the lot. The good thing was that she had a good old bad tempered bite hold on the syringe making it far easer to get a second one in beside it while her mouth was already open. In all I managed to get a full four mils into her.

Since then I've managed six mils a day using the same method and the same mixture. Out of six mils allowing for the amount she spits out( we've never been lucky enough to have her bite the syringe again) I reckon I'm getting at least three or four mils a day into her. I don't want to overload her so will increase this gradually.

I was worried that the baby food would be too rich for her and that her system wouldn't be able to digest it properly but it's been three days now and she seems to be doing fine. Using the baby food and syringe feeding is a lot less stressful for her than trying to force feed her mice or wax worm. It only takes a couple of minutes a day and the whole experience is better for both of us.

We'll see what the scales say on Sunday. I'm hoping for at least some gain. I feel a lot better for taking positive action and for her being able to tolerate it.

Everybody else is in good health and causing no concerns. I had to throw out two of the beardie eggs from Kadina the other day because they've finally begun to rot. The other fourteen are still incubating, about six of them are well on the turn but I'm not going to throw them away until I know that there is absolutely no chance of them ever hatching. The rest still look as they did when I extracted them. I'm still of the opinion that they are infertile but I'm not giving up on them until I have to.

Corona, my little collard female is almost certainly gravid. I just hope she either lays her eggs before we go on holiday or holds them until we come back. I have a horrible feeling that she has about a week gestation to go, which means she will indeed lay while we're away. I intend to have a dummy run with Marty before we go using grapes as eggs to see that he knows what he's doing.

We are supposed to be conserving money for our holiday next week ... but Mark One was having a huge sale today. I went on a mad shopping spree and bought everything I could possibly need including sun tan lotion. Russ has been nagging me about this for days I think he's worried that I'm going to use all of his. Everything that had already been reduced from say twenty five pounds to twelve was further slashed in half. I got a gorgeous tan lather handbag for seven quid. Pair of gold and bronze stiletto shoes, also seven pounds. I got a trendy parker coat with a fur collar and tailored waist for seven pounds, two bikini's and a sportswear swimsuit for ten pounds each, a pair of jeans, several pairs of shorts, a couple of dresses and about ten tops. I bought a complete set of new make-up and a bag to house it all and I even bought a bottle of new perfume.

I asked the lady at the counter if she could recommend a nice one. I wanted a new fragrance that would always remind me of the holiday. I had intended to buy something out there but at those prices I couldn't resist. The assistant said that the Britneys are nice ... but I thought they might be a bit young for me. I was also concerned that they might bring on sudden hair loss. A lady in the queue recommended Chloe to me so I bought that. I should have listened to the alarm bells that were ringing, the lady was about a hundred and nine. I tried a squirt when I got back to work and it does smell reminiscent of old ladies. I'm going to go back and buy another bottle of perfume and I'll wrap that one up and give it to somebody that I don't like very much for Christmas. Maybe I will give the odour of Miss Spears a go after all.

The other day Russ was moaning that he'd run out of coat hangers so I sent him a text. “You know we're short of coat hangers? Well I've bought twenty. It's not my fault that they just happened to have stuff attached to them at the time!”

I'm intensely annoyed with work. My deliveries have dried up again. I've put in toy orders for the last three weeks running and haven't had a thing through. At Christmas when I played hell about not getting my orders on time we agreed that I'd have a weekly standing order of seventy DVD's, I sell an average of eighty a week. That would mean that once a month I could put in my own order for any new titles or fill up stock. I haven't had my standing order once and have only had three DVD deliveries of about two hundred titles each time since Christmas. This year despite asking for them half a dozen times I haven't had my targets through. Forgetting that I can't run the shop properly if my deliveries don't come through on a weekly basis, but how the hell am I supposed to meet and beat my targets (so making my bonus) if I don't know what they are? Without knowing what my weekly targets are I can't calculate how much of my gross profit can be spent on re-ordering. And just to add the icing to the cake, I had a solicitors letter last week. We haven't paid our water rates this time. They are threatening to cut our water off next week and begin court proceedings. This is a huge national company and yet they can't pay their basic utility bills? This week I've had twelve hundred pounds worth of work done having my windows re signed. They have to be greyed out so that the public can't see through them and then I've had the new decals and logos put on them. I sent off a purchase order to Head Office last week to release the funds to pay this account. One of the two men who came to do the work is my cousin's husband, I'm going to be personally embarrassed if they don't get paid promptly. I'm annoyed with Daz again this week. On Monday I did get one delivery through, only six weeks after I ordered them. I received my magazine order. Every counsel has it's own rules and regulations. To enable us to have our licence renewed we have to comply with these, even if a sex shop under a different county council might not have to. For instance I'm not allowed to have a window display. Most sex shops can display tasteful novelties and underwear. I also have to bag every individual magazine so that potential customers cannot skim through them before they buy. This makes what should be one of our best sellers a very slow mover. People don't want to buy a magazine if they can't see what's inside it. Newsagents can display their top shelve magazines in their natural state as long as they are kept on the top shelf. My area manager suggested that I leave Daz something to do every day in an attempt to keep him in the shop when he's supposed to be. I asked him to bag and seal the box of magazines and put them out. This is a long and boring job, because Daz once told me that he'd hate having to do it I've never asked him before and I don't mind doing it because it kills a few hours. I've come in today to find that the lazy git has simply put a piece of cellotape over them. This contravenes the conditions of our license and is enough to get us shut down and prosecuted. I'm ready for my holiday.

So we're all set for next Tuesday. I still have to get my money but we've got that organised for Saturday after I've been paid. I'm so worried about leaving the animals. I hope Marty behaves himself and doesn't take advantage of Nicki and cause any problems. Mind Nicki is a bit of a force to be reckoned with when she's in a rattie so I think she can handle him. This might be my last entry before we go away. It's soon come round.

And just to make my happiness even more spectacular, it's Wednesday, that means a nine o'clock helping of The Apprentice. Life doesn't get much better than that. Only three more shifts to do at work and I'm done for two weeks.