10/8/07 (Monday)
Hello. I’m typing this up in word to copy and paste later. I don’t feel like typing directly to the blog right now. It’s hard to do this every day. Esp. since I seem to lately only want to talk about bad things. And well… Sat… well you’ll see.
I want to first though mention that the last few days have been great weather wise. Even the cold front Sunday wasn’t that bad. Friday and Saturday were beautiful, and so was today. I walked both Sat and today, though Sat the front was coming in so it was pretty windy and I had to put in ear plugs.
I fed my baby/young snakes vitamin laden worms Sunday morning and I was glad to see most of them ate. Esp the two littlest and the snake with the broken back.
This poor guy I got last year.. and he looked fine. However he totally flipped out around this time last year – a few months after I got him. I think then is when he may have broke his back. It was partially my fault as I wasn’t holding him tightly… I like to let them roam a bit and give them a little freedom without totally letting go. I was cleaning the cage with one hand and holding him with the other – and he just started snapping his body back and forth. It was only a few seconds… but count out 10 seconds using a clock – sometimes that can be a long time.
I was more careful and didn’t really handle much at all. But in January I had to do a through cleaning instead of just changing the paper towel around him… and I decided to totally switch cages. I prepared the new cage and carefully put him in it. Somehow though he landed partially upside down – and didn’t right himself.
This alarmed me. And after several months observation I realized something was wrong with one of his eyes and also he seemed to have trouble at a certain point on his back just above the half way point. His muscle control was less. I wasn’t sure if he had had a stroke – or broke his back. I took him to the vet and she confirmed both a blind eye and a broken back. It could either have been a real break or a “separation” of the vertebra. Only an X-ray could tell - and there is/was no point. He is not very large. Less then 10 grams.
He still eats but has trouble shedding. Recently, he didn’t eat several weeks in a row… and he looks horrible… no muscle tone. I discovered he had started the shedding process and didn’t finish – so that is why I think he didn’t feel like eating. As soon as I got the shed off he started eating again and now has more energy.
Still I feel his days may be numbered, I just take it a day/week at a time. If he is eating and acting interested (he comes out to “bask”) in his surroundings, then I feel he is fine.
With reptiles anyway when they don’t feel good … they die. One day they may be just fine and the next … dead. There normally isn’t any “putting to sleep”. He is also a garter snake (just realized I didn’t mention that.) A Florida blue to be exact. (well I could put the Latin name here but I don’t feel like looking it up)
It occurs to me that larger snakes could be “put to sleep” if they have a incurable disease or something.
Well this is fairly long. So I will put off the other stuff. Just let me touch on it.
I was majorly disappointed in Church this Sat. oh heck I was P.O.ed. The Priest went ahead and proved my defense wrong. But I’ll talk about that later.
In contrast… I had a great night at bible study. We are doing Romans, and the speaker talked about religion vs relationship with Christ. I WISH I HAD RECORDED IT. Sigh.
Well we had off today. (Columbus day – and don’t get me started about the stupidity of people on both sides of the “issue” of weather or not it should be celebrated – another disappointment in people I idolized as a child. – guess everyone is human and well all humans are fallen sinners – and yes that includes me.)
So it’s back to work tomorrow. Ick. :p
Goodnight.
SS
[ view entry ]
| permalink
Back Next
| 1 | 2 |
LadySharon's Blog
Calendar
