As many of you know, I've become a reptile hobbyist. We caught a green anole (
anolis carolinensis). She was pregnant, laid eggs, and subsequently, in October, one of the eggs hatched. We were thrilled. In the meantime, I'd become hooked, and bought two more anoles at a pet store. One was an emaciated male I named Scarecrow, and the other a female I called Judy. The wild-caught lizard was a total Diva, and constantly displayed towards the other female and even became aggressive, chasing her around the cage with her mouth open. I named her Liza. Scarecrow was so thin, it was kind of scary. I'd read online many stories from other hobbyists who had tried to "Save" thin lizards from pet stores and no one ever succeeded, but hope springs eternal. After three weeks, he started eating, was active, and seemed to be doing well. Then suddenly, he took a turn for the worse, passed a waxworm half-digested as stool, and after that, on Halloween night, he turned spotty and wouldn't drink anymore. Within just a few hours, he was dying. I tried to warm him up by putting him in a container and running warm water underneath it, but he began gasping for breath, and he died shortly after 10 pm that night. Meanwhile, I had accidentally left the door of the upright cage ajar... and tragedy struck. My blue tabby cat, Ripley, had just taken an interest in the lizards for the first time the day before. He jumped on my desk, got into the cage, and killed the hatchling, whom Sophie had named Roses, and caught Judy and was holding her in his mouth when I discovered this. I would have thought they just escaped and ran off if I hadn't heard him growling in the hallway and seen her dangling from his mouth. He dropped her, I caught her, and I have been treating her wounds. He had her hips between his canine teeth and left puncture wounds just over both hips, and bruises and scrapes elsewhere. I have put her in an infirmary cage and I'm feeding her small prey - fruit flies, pinhead crickets - and I built her a mesh "hammock" to hang onto, since she isn't using her hind legs much right now. She can still move them, but it's obviously painful. I'm cleaning the wound daily with hydrogen peroxide and treating it with neosporin and an antiseptic reptile wound treatment I got at the pet store.
Here's a photo of her progress today. She is looking better, although you can still see the swelling and the injury. She is more active and alert today than she has been. I think she's starting to chafe at the small infirmary cage, so tomorrow I will clean the 10 gallon tank again and set her up in there.
Here's a picture of the mesh hammock I made for her to climb. She has been MUCH improved since I made it last night, as she was having trouble holding onto the leaves with just her front legs since she was injured. The mesh holds water similar to how the leaves do, only better, and she's seemed more comfortable with it. I made it from the extra substrate mesh I had from setting up the tall tank with hydroballs. I hot-glued the mesh to some sticks that I had also hot-glued together to make a support system. I baked the sticks in the oven for 30 minutes at 300 degrees to kill anything on them first, of course! I also used this mesh to make feeder insect storage boxes out of some awesome sterlite snap-lock boxes so the cat can't dump my crickets out on me in the middle of the night again. :)
