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Thread: Our special lizard...gone

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    1,210

    Unhappy Our special lizard...gone

    Well, I haven't been around for awhile but here I am with terrible news. Our special little girl, an eastern European legless lizard, has taken off. Her cage lid was left open all day while we were at work and she went for it. We've spent the last 4 hours combing ever inch of the basement and first floor, but it's hopeless. Our house is over 100 years old and there are several places where we have the walls open or she could get access to the basement and outdoors. We have rolls of carpet and padding piled up in one room, and there are all sorts of pipes and tubes piled in the basement. She can fit under gaps below several of the doors to get into rooms where we are remodeling.

    We have had her longer than Hernando. She was our first pet after going many years without any. She was extremely intelligent and had quite a personality, and had bonded with both of us. She was very expressive and manipulative for such a minimalist, with several distinctive, weird habits. We had expected to have her with us for the next 50 years. We got her as a theraputic pet for HernandosPapa, and she served that role well. Now it's all up to Hernando.

    I really feel sick about this. It has left a huge hole in our family.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Citrus Heights, CA
    Posts
    815

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    Oh I am so, so sorry!! Do you think that there's a chance of finding her still? Laying out some of her favorite food or something...
    "Why do blessings always come in disguises? If I were a blessing, I'd run around naked."

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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
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    1,210

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    We put out pie pans of water for her in the rooms where she's likely to have crawled into a wall. She is a picky eater and sometimes goes for a week without eating just to get our attention. Earthworms are her favorite food, but we have to put them in a deep bowl so they don't trot off, and she is unlikely to smell them from far away. This is a fossorial reptile that lacks the agility of a snake, yet has an unrealistic body self-image -- I don't want to say she's clumsy, but she is. She is fully capable of crawling into a narrow space that she can't back out of. If she gets outdoors, without loose substrate to tunnel into (we have hard clay soil) she will be eaten within an hour by some cat.

    I just see the rest of my life played out searching for her every evening for hours.:(

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    San Diego
    Posts
    194

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    Im so sorry. :(
    0.2.0 Ball Pythons, Kacey, Kahlua,
    0.1.0 Black and White Tegu, Shredder
    1.0.0 Extreme Giant Tegu, Dino

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Tampa, FL
    Posts
    160

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    I'm so sorry, I've had that happen when I used to keep hamsters.
    Try making a small "trap" for her - like when I had lost a hamster, I would make a trap by making "steps" with books, and leading a small amount of food up them to a trashcan with a thin piece of cardboard on top of it. When the pet reaches the cardboard, they fall into the trashcan. I'd leave bedding at the bottom to comfort the fall, maybe try something like that to catch her?
    Also check for warm places; when I worked at Petsmart, we lost our California King snake twice, and each time he went to the Groomers, and hid under the towel dryer.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Central FL
    Posts
    4,349

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    I'm so sorry, HM. They are very cool animals. I've always thought they would be nice to have around. It's a Sheltopusik, correct?
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    1,210

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    It's a Sheltopusik, correct?
    Correct. If you see them at a pet store or reptile store, they aren't much too look at. You really have to observe one for awhile to appreciate their form factor. Her head and body shape is more like a BTS (she is related to the skinks) than a snake, and her locomotion reflects the lack of prehensile ability present in most snakes. As a lizard, she has eyelids, which in her case can be very expressive.

    Ours has a mottled pattern with subtle coloration. The overall effect is if you'd dropped an olive into a very deep, deep martini with a blue tinted stem.

    If you google "sheltopusik skull" you'll find a sort of CAT scan showing how various skeletal components have fused as an adaptation for fossorial specialization -- both digging tunnels and crushing snail shells. I have a theory that the hard, elongated brain case allowed for more capacity for a proportionately larger brain (for their size). We observed, and saw examples on the internet, evidence of pretty complex problem solving, strategizing, and specific memory.

    In nature, they tend to specialize in snails (at least in some locations) but ours eats a variety of worms. She used to eat pinkies and weanlings, but for some reason rarely accepted them in the last 9 months or so.

    Try making a small "trap" for her - like when I had lost a hamster, I would make a trap by making "steps" with books, and leading a small amount of food up them to a trashcan with a thin piece of cardboard on top of it. When the pet reaches the cardboard, they fall into the trashcan. I'd leave bedding at the bottom to comfort the fall, maybe try something like that to catch her?
    Our girl would never undignify herself by climbing for food, unfortunately. And I think that her years of captivity may have compromised her sense of smell. When we first got her, she was clearly responsive to subtle scents and excited by things like the smell of fish cooking downstairs, or insulted if I used hand lotion then stuck my limb in her face. More recently, she seemed to switch to visual cues and expected to find a specific species of prey item in a certain bowl. I've set up little stations around the house: a source of heat, a bowl of worms, a dish of water. But I'm miserable because I don't think it will be sufficient to guide her out of the thick, desicating, lath-and-plaster walls -- if she's even still in the house. These little light stations feel more like shrines to her. I can't stop worrying myself sick about her and feeling like **** for the lapse of attention, so maybe the shrines will help with that.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Posts
    1,210

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    well, I just wrote a big ol' update story about how she came back after months, fat and more personality than ever. But I must be out of practice using the site because it disconnected when I hit Post and I lost the whole darn entry. I'll try again when I'm sitting in a normal chair.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Central FL
    Posts
    4,349

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    I saw someone else saying they had issues with having to log-in after a period of inactivity. I don't recall that being a problem before. Cut and paste along the way I guess. :(

    I'm glad to hear she returned!
    Laura R (FL)
    1.0.0 Colombian Tegu
    1.4.0 Argentine B&W Tegu
    1.2.0 Red Tegu
    1.2.0 B/WxRed Tegu
    1.0.0 Green Ameiva (yet another teiid)
    7 other lizards
    1 little gator
    3 FL box turtle
    1 Sulcata tortoise
    16 snakes
    5 fuzzy pets
    4 little frogs
    a bunch of creepy bugs
    and a partridge in a pear tree

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    San Antonio,TX
    Posts
    9,505

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    Congrats on getting her back .

    Laura. I always had that problem ( from day one ). If I'm going to gather some infos from the internet ( like links ) and my post is going to be long or I take to long it will log me off. Iff it's a long post I ALWAYS copy and paste. I got used to it. But I'm going to try to figure out what we can do about this .
    Rich is not how much you have, or where you are going, or what you are.Rich is who you have beside you.

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