Gus

This one is for Luke.



Luke, Gunner and Gus (laying down not looking like a retard)

 Gus just turned 15 years old. He was an awesome dog, you didn't have to tell him to lay down or go away...he was just calm and relaxed and enjoyable to be around. Sadly, he hasn't been doing good recently. His age was just catching up to him. He would fall down, puke and everything you don't ever want to see a dog do because you want them to always be youthful and your buddy. Rather than make him suffer they decided to put him to sleep last night. It was probably one of ther hardest decisions they had to make. It will be better for him though, because he was so old and winters here are kind of harsh.

Love you Gus, you were awesome.

Adapting

It's a good thing that I am good at adapting. The guinea pigs were supposed to stay by Luke in a large divided cage. However I misunderstood how large the cage was to be and when I saw it I decided it wouldn't work for them (it would have been far to small). So as a result Luke and I went to Menard's where I picked out a large shelving unit that now holds every one's tanks (at my house) AND my school books. And shockingly it isn't an eyesore, or at least not as bad of one as I was expecting. So now each guinea has its own cage (Ginger and Tanner) with Sonic below them and the reptiles above them. Lately, Ginger has been acting quite bitchy which is really pissing me off. I think it is just because any time they got used to a spot for their cages it changed. Hopefully now her behavior will improve that she has a more stationary home. I would be agitated too if my house kept moving on me.

I'd like to introduce you to the three larger leopard geckos that we got on black Friday for a -very- reasonable price.

Morning

Morning

Sunny

Sunny



Dawn





Dawn

They are all reasonably behaved for having got them from a local pet store. They were of good size and moved around in their cage while we were watching. In their new home they love to bask and we gave them four little hidey places to dig around in so that there would always be choices available for them. They also have a decent sized water dish which we haven't seen them use a lot, but that's okay. So far they have been fed roaches and crickets and on Sunday when we go to the All Animal Expo we will get some mealworms for them. I'm sure they will have a Merry Christmas, lol.

Hunkering Down

Huge snow storm on the way. 5-8 inches tonight and another 2-4 inches tomorrow. yikes. However, even though this sounds like a bad thing it is actually a very good thing. See this weekend Luke and I will be upgrading Dino's cage from a 36 to a 55 gallon. I'm sure she will be thrilled. Also hopefully we will be able to clean all the crestie tanks... so yes we will be trapped in the house, no we won't be bored.

Anywho, I'd like everyone to meet Dino (Die-no) my Blue Diamond Iguana

She is my favorite animal to bring to the shows the society does. The Herp Society has two large iguanas, one male and one female, that we are housing. We usually bring Dino and one of them to any of our shows. It is great for educational purposes, because when you go to buy an iguana you buy one Dino's size or smaller and don't expect to eventually have one the size of the other iguanas within a few years. Dino sits on my shoulder very patiently at the shows and I've never had her(?) jump off there. At home is a different story, she is always ready to jump about and explore. I think she knows that the house is a safe place and she can do such things. I say she(?) because I think she is old enough to sex now and after comparing images of male versus female pictures, I'm leaning toward Dino being female. The pores that allow for identification just don't look as big as they should be for a male. Dino is only about two feet long and I've had her for around a year now. What I really like about her is right after she sheds her head and shoulder area is a very pretty blue color. I highly recommend looking pictures up of them because my pictures do not do the color justice. I took them about a week or two before she shed. Dino gets feed every day some greens that we have in the house and once a week she gets a few calcium dusted crickets. She has a large, but shallow water dish for relaxing in and a nice hammock so she can bask by her light. One of her favorite snacks is strawberries, however she will take most any food from your hand and is very gentle when feeding.





Endless Stress

So I have been dieing to get on and update my blog for days. Apparently I typed in my email wrong when signing up so they have been sending my password to a non-existent email (I think...) and haven't bothered to go through and give me access to this darn account. Whole bunch of stress and anger at stupid google was the result. Did you know it is absolutely impossible to contact them with a message for help? You have to post to a forum or wait for an automated email that is useless anyway. Stupid F@#*ing google.

At any rate. I have some good news! I have a hedgehog whom I love but is awfully stressful and expensive. Not to long ago he poked his eye on something and when I woke up in the morning there was blood everywhere in his cage and his eye was popping out. Freaked the bejesus outta me so I ran him to the emergency room to get fixed. The nice doctor kindly knocked him out and sewed his eye shut with stitches and gave me drops for him. He was like that two weeks. Then last Monday I took him in to (hopefully) get the stitches removed and find out his eye was going to stay in and he would only be blind in that eye. Well she wanted to wait another week because she was worried about it popping back out. So on Monday of this week when I took him in again she removed the stitches! So far his little eye is staying in, but he will be blind now in that eye. Sadly, if the eye ever pops out we will have to remove it. Sonic is a little trooper though and he went through the whole ordeal like a man. He never made a fuss or whined in pain once, even when he was all bloody.

A picture before his accident. The eye that is clearly visible on the left is the blind side now.



And now for some more...semi exciting news. Well I got my guinea pig Ginger on black Friday and was kindly misinformed about many things by the individual who sold her to us. We were told that a large ball for her to run in would be great which we were informed at a local pet store would be horrible for her. Then after doing research online about them i found that they should be kept in pairs or groups to make them happier. This I also was not informed of or i would have picked a friend of hers out of the little tank. Well I managed to find a male guinea pig on craigslist for free. Went to check him out today and see if he would work. When I introduced the two they seemed to take to each other right away. I'm not totally surprised by this either, both were kept by themselves for some amount of time. The only downfall is that he is male and she is female... I called the vet to see how much it would be to have one of them fixed/neutered...$90 dollars for him, $150 for her! My gosh! How flippin outrageous is that?! They are guinea pigs for goodness sake not dogs! I cant imagine how much it would be for a damn dog then. Haven't named him or taken pictures of him yet so unfortunately he is unnamed for now. But here is a picture of the sweetheart that I am doing this all for.

Oh and I always stay by Luke on Friday and Saturday nights so on Sunday while I was there we cleaned the 125 gallon. My gosh that this is...huge. So many decorations and rocks. When we got the tank and cleaned and set it all up it took about 15-20 hours. To do a tank cleaning it took 9 hours. Just an enormous amount of things to do. needless to say, we decided that we need more plecos because what we have isn't enough apparently, I scrubbed the decorations only and it took me that long. Luke cleaned gravel and helped with the decorations when he was done. what a flippin job that was. The tank looks beautiful now though.

Well, I hope you had a good weekend. Mine was definitely full of stress and excitement. I'm kind of glad it is over. 

Kara

I just got home from class and something exciting happened that I have been waiting for...for like 2 days or so. Kara shed! Kara is one of my baby leopard geckos (I have three). All 3 were clearly going to shed soon I realized Monday when I saw them and I knew I wanted to take nice pictures of them when they did. And lo and behold when I got home from class Kara was beautiful. I tried taking some pictures of her but she refused to hold still long enough to get nice shots and then my camera batteries died. All three of my baby leopard geckos were purchased from Wally of Supreme Gecko (http://supremegecko.com/) at two different intervals. Kara was purchased on November 14; Coral and Galilee (Gal-uh-lee) were purchased on August 22 of this year. All are amazing babies and have been shedding, eating, and shedding some more! I also have witnessed them actually drinking from their water dish, which is rather unusual because most leopards that I have seen 'drink' have just licked the drops of leaves and things. Watching them drink is quite possibly the cutest thing I ever saw. When Coral and Galilee shed I will post pictures of them as well.

Ari & Texas

Ahh... the first real (as in somewhat accumulating) snow of the year! You know what that means? Christmas is coming!!! The animals are all excited too. Luke and I will be making a trip down to Illinois on December 19 to go to an expo where we will buy all sorts of nummy presents for all the good little herps (reptiles and amphibians for those of you not used to the terminology). I'm sure we will bring some baby mice back, meal worms, and if we happen to get low on crickets by then (which I seriously doubt, Luke just ordered 3000 for us to split) we will bring that back as well. And if they are really good, we will dig them up some nice juicy roaches and earthworms too. Don't you wish that's what you got in YOUR stocking?!!? ha.

Now I'd like to introduce you to the two reasons I started this blog, Ari (F) and Texas (M) the Leopard Lizards. Apparently, these types of lizards are slightly rare within the pet industry and Luke and I happened to come across them at one of the shows the Herp Society that we are officers of, attends regularly. Leopard Lizards are very fun to keep but are meant for more experience herp keepers. They are to be kept in a similar set up to that of a collared lizard. They enjoy basking in the sunlight and as a result require the special bulb that emits the correct lighting spectrum. They also like it very warm and are native to the American Southwest and parts of Mexico. Currently, I am feeding mine gut-loaded crickets that I lightly dust with a little calcium and a special kind of roach. When they are bigger I've read that they will enjoy pinky-mice and even other lizards! These guys love to job around in their cage and are capable of very fast running speeds so a longer tank with minimal decorations is encouraged. Currently, Ari and Texas have a body length of about 2-3 inches with another 4 inch tail or so, giving them an approximate length of 7 inches. they are fairly tiny yet in size, their heads being about as big around as a dime. They enjoy basking together a lot and I often see them either sitting on top of each other or right next to each other under the heat light. What I really enjoy about these two is that they don't seem to mind being held as much as other lizards do.

Luke and I brought these guys home on November 14 of this year and are they doing well so far. Hopefully they will be around for a long time and see many more updates!