Critter heartbreak

See here first.

Today, I posted this on the forums at ball-pythons.net. If anyone has additional input from the blogging world, we'd like to have it:

I've been searching for a while now and coming up empty. We had a clutch of four eggs. When the first one pipped, one of the other eggs started to swell. It was a perfect egg before. Within hours of the first egg pipping, the indentations totally filled out, and the white of the shell disappeared, leaving it completely transparent. At this point, the snake could be seen inside, perfectly developed, but motionless. The bloated egg continued to sweat, while the surrounding eggs remained indented and unaffected.

By the time the other little ones pipped, this egg looked like a water balloon, only minimally larger at this point, but hub cut the egg open to reveal a perfectly formed, same size as its siblings, but dead baby. Heartwrenching.

What happened? None of the eggs was pre-cut. The egg was fine. We candled them and detected movement in all eggs in the clutch before the first one pipped. Within an hour or two after the first pip from another egg, this egg just filled with fluid, rounded out, and did the things mentioned above.

The rest of the clutch looks fine, although they're still pipped. We're not messing with them unless there is a danger posed by the egg remnants from the bloated egg.

Any help is much appreciated.

This is our fist clutch of the year. It's absolutely heartbreaking. The one that didn't make it had a beautiful pattern. The albino didn't prove out, but she gave off some very aberrant patterns to her offspring, and to lose one so close to the end is just hard. No other way to put it.

So, if you're a ball python enthusiast and you've ever had something like this happen, please let us know. I can't find anything on the net, and we lost a very gorgeous baby.

Gah.

To add insult to injury, Chester Junior got loose again. He's gone to gerbil heaven. We couldn't find him before the cat did.

Now, I'm going to type for colorectal surgeons, and I've already typed three reports on terminal cancer patients. Life is very depressing.

I think I'll go hand feed my bunny some hay.

This is why the old woman swallowed the fly.

I think I know why that old woman swallowed the fly.

She had too many critters. They made her crazy, and she'd had it.

Once she started with the fly, it got easier...

It all started with five gerbils, whom I stole from my husband.

Let me tell you about Ashlee. She's my most prolific gerbil. She also makes the most beautiful gerbils, too. She makes silver, blond, peach, gray, and nearly white.

Imagine my joy...when she had nine.

Nine.

All healthy, perfect and booful, just like their mother and their father, Chester. He's all silver and quite a looker. Months went by and no gerbils. I thought maybe Ashlee was past her prime, enjoying growing old with our lovely Mr. Chester. Greg Graziani has a theory on barometric pressure, which I now totally endorse, and African-originating animals. If it rains, it pours...

animals of African origin.

I have six gerbil enclosures. I have lots and lots of silver ones. In fact, when Ashlee got tired of her first set of offspring vying for her mate, I pulled her out (she can kick some serious gerbil butt) and put her in a cage of her own. Gerbils, however, do not like being alone. They get depressed, and a lone gerbil is a mean gerbil. I've heard many times that someone bought a gerbil and took it home, only to have it bite the heck out of them. There's a reason for that. They need another gerbil or two.

So, I introduced Ashlee to Chester. They took an instant liking to one another. And there was peace amongst the gerbils and Ashlee's former cagemates did this:



In unison, aaaaaaaaaaw. Cuteness to make us hurl.

Where was I? Oh. Nine. Nine precious little ones. When their fur grew, we went crazy. We had another snowball looking thing. More silvers. More blondes. And one little Chester Jr.

Who's been nothing but a thorn in my side.

I've had baby gerbils in this cage before, no problems. Heck, Ashlee's first litter resided in this cage. These little guys, though, are Houdini people. Several got out the other day, but were tame enough for me to put my hand on the floor and they crawled on it.

Not with Chester Jr. Wood floors + knees + fanny in air + mild profanity + begging a 5-cm gerbil = very funny, glad no one was here to witness it.

I got him back.

I have nowhere else to put them, but young gerbils grow quickly. Feed and distract has been my attack with extra food and constant supply of what KitKat calls "gerbil crack," i.e., paper products, which they will shred endlessly.

Except Chester Jr.

This runt won't grow. I have the gooseneck lamp on my desk trained on the cage, which is on a medium-sized bookcase. Why? I see movement out of the corner of my eye, and I catch little Mr. Chester Jr in the act, hold out my hand, he crawls on it, and I put him back.

For two days, no Junior looking down upon me as I worked.

I heard something rattle around under my desk behind my under-desk plastic stackable drawers. A paper not quite shut in the bottom drawer bounced.

I counted the gerbils in the cage.

Yep, Junior, out to terrorize again.

I waited. I felt him cross my foot, but he darted behind another bookcase. Patiently, I waited. He never goes far.

Fur against my foot again. I look down.

It's not Chester Jr. It's the CAT.

This is trouble.

Okay, maybe not. Mr. Purr likes to play with his food and then leave it after he loves it to death...

He won't kill it...

He's smaller than me...

He fits in those little nooks...

So I let Purr do the stalking.

Mr. Sapphire woke up, and I'm thinking I'm finally getting him back for the Moonlight escapade. I've got the gooseneck lamp following the path of the gerbil and the cat. My workstation is comprised of two desks sitting perpendicular and a narrow bookcase sitting at the junction.

The gerbil ran from one side of a desk leg to the other, and the cat, stuck by the bookcase, leapt back and forth to each side...

Then shut off my computer.

My work was saved, though. Lucked out there.

For 15 minutes, Purr and Junior went back and forth by the desk leg. Then, Junior decided to take a narrow path behind the other desk and make a run for under the bed.

Mr. Purr is 18 pounds or better. Mr. Purr does not do well running under the bed, but he tried his best.

His head bumping on the box springs, to the head, to the side, to the head, to the base, and then he shot out, hot on the trail of a little gray gerbil, who went right back to the spot where it all began.

Good thing I hadn't turned my computer back on, yet.

I put a crick in the gooseneck lamp's neck.

Finally, Purr tired the poor gerbil out. The gerbil came close, I scooped him up, and put him back in the cage, with more food.

I keep checking for Houdini to reappear. Purr's still trying to figure out what happened to his playmate.

In the shadows of the dark, I see the little gerbils climb. I want to take time and figure out HOW they're getting out, but I already spent a good half hour watching Purr corner Junior until I got him. Safe and sound (for now), Purr's left to patrol Mr. Sapphire's feeder mice, trying to get a piece of that action, too.

And I really entertained thoughts about breeding lion-head rabbits. What was I thinking?

Cuteness to make you hurl your Asti Spumante

I didn't even pose them this time. Happy New Year!

Slither - Pit to Hiss In

Sister Joni, dear? Don't read any further down this page. Skip this post entirely. I'm not stalking tonight; I'm talking slithering.

I felt a little uptight today. One kid missed school, one has a big test tomorrow, and one had a project due and a test. In other words, I have IMs going like mad and Google wants to charge me per hit, while my mind switches from manganese to ser versus estar to Wounded Knee and back again.

Two Nimrods wanted the Nimrods' computer. Both had valid reasons. After some debate, I gave up mine and went back to bug Mr. Sapphire.

It's been a while since I've been back to the snake room. I mean, I go there almost daily to talk to Mr. Sapphire, but I was actually in the snake room, looking around, and paying attention. A certain frame of mind needs to be utilized in the snake room, because everything...and I mean everything...moves.

Mr. Sapphire pretty much keeps the mice to the left-hand wall, along with their food. To the right, there is a 50-gallon tank with rats. Yes, rats. Huge, ugly, smelly...

They used to be huge, ugly, and smelly, until Mr. Sapphire introduced us to soft-furred rats. Their little ears are so big they flop onto themselves, and they are so soft! I mentioned how cute they were and KitKat, who wandered back to let me know the computer was free, covered my eyes. The last time I took a shinin' to critters, I stole their cage. I have a spot by the window that's free...

Mr. Sapphire no longer keeps the ugly rats in the snake room proper. We have a room toward the back of the house, and they have been rightfully banished to give way to the precious soft furs with their soft, ruffled coats. Did I mention we have one that looks like a panda bear?

Then, you see the snakes, each kept in its own Rubbermaid (or knock-off brand) tub of a size made to accommodate the slitherling. We have a couple of new acquisitions lately, a baby spider ball python and a baby lemon ball python. I talked to my friend from the kitchen tonight.










Arachne (right) and No Name

I know it's silly, but picking a name for a snake takes a while. We now have two spider balls, one who got named "Spaz" pretty quick because of the motion he does with his head, a weaving motion. Scooter was always on the go, and Gideon - he was just a special deal. Mr. Sapphire purchased a snake and his snake got shipped to someone else. In order to rectify the mistake, they gave us Gideon at the same price. Given that he's a black pastel, which are hard to find, it was worth missing out on the snake Mr. Sapphire initially wanted. Gideon's grown a lot. He's a very nice little guy. He's never tried to strike anyone, and we got him out of his box twice tonight, once to satisfy my curiosity, and the next for me to show my enthusiasm to KitKat over how much he's grown. He wound his tail around our hands and looked at us like we had a right to be there. Yeah, he's cool. Delilah was one of our first; Jezebel, too, and she's got a nasty habit of striking food but not eating it. Both have grown so much over the last year.



Scooter (right) and Gideon

In addition, we have one we think is ovulating. Her body is all bumpy and her spine is showing. We're not new to snakes or their genetics, but we are relatively new to the whole reproduction thing. This is Mr. Sapphire's first true breeding season, and the boys are hard at work. Scooter's finally figured out how to slow down his life a little bit, and Gideon's just stalwart.

We've had a few accidents, too. Spaz thought it was a good idea to stick his head out of one of his air vents. We still can't figure it out, but he got his 2.5-cm head out a 0.5-cm hole. Mr. Sapphire called me back there to help, and it took a few breaths to realize what I saw, Spaz's head poking up with the white Rubbermaid lid hiding the rest of his body. He dislocated his jaw and, when he took that first rodent after the accident, Mr. Sapphire breathed a huge sigh of relief. Tonight, he proudly showed me how Spaz is back to normal, his head waggling every which way.

Our other accident involved a very large normal female. We only suspect she struck a rodent and hit the floor a little too hard, as there were no marks on her, just a very swollen head, so swollen we thought she lost an eye. In looking at her tonight, her head is now back to normal, and the eye is still there and working fine! Mr. Sapphire just IM'd me to let me know she just ate for the first time since 09/22. That's significant. That was her date of injury.

We named the new spider baby "Arachne." My friend from the kitchen is now "Moonlight," and we're working on names for a few of the others. I'm gaining confidence that we might actually be able to get some more eggs soon, and maybe little morph hatchlings.


Moonlight

My gerbils rock the world, though. If having the snakes got me my gerbils, I think that alone was worth it. Most certainly, some of it has gotten me some good blog fodder, so that's definitely worth it.

I'm redoing my tags here to make things more organized, so bear with me. I feel so relaxed right now. I'm excited about the future and creating morphs, not just for the retail value (although that's definitely the first priority), but for the experience. This gives us material for science projects for years to come, with established documentation. Mr. Sapphire's exhaustive records are such an asset.

To see the rest of our ladies and gents, please visit his site. I might help him get some new pics this weekend and help him update. We don't have anything for sale, but it helps him keep track and let everyone see what he's doing.

For more dementia, please see sapphiretigress.com. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Love, denial and, yes, gerbils.

Click the title. Thanks!

Do gerbils leave messages?

I think they might prefer this brand of box to shred, rip and build nests. Maybe not.

How many gerbils fit into a 5" x 5" square?

Answer: Thirteen. Yes, all 13. Well, Dreamsicle refused to stay put, but he was in and out of the pile, too. Honest!

You'd think with us buying them a 42" x 18" home, they'd spread out all over, and they do when they're playing, but they all pile up like this when sleeping--even over the babies, when they have tiny ones.

All the different-colored bits of paper are remnants of cardboard products we reduce, reuse, and recycle by giving them to the gerbils. You see, their teeth never stop growing, so they need to constantly nibble. They don't actually eat the paper, just shred it for nesting material. I spared you and cropped the trashbag box. They love paper towel rolls, too, running through them for a while before shredding them and adding it to their bedding. With 13 gerbils in this colony and all the paper products I know we've put in there, I think half their bedding is actually labeled bedding, and the other half is recycled cardboard from ordinary, everyday product containers.

Gerbils!

I like gerbils.

I am not a big fan of rodents, never have been. I am in no way fond of hamsters, no matter how hard Mr. Sapphire tries to get me to like them. They're noisy. When our power went off during the last ice storm, Mr. Sapphire and I stayed to take care of the snakes, using the gas heater in the snake room for warmth. Sleeping among snakes didn't bother me one whit; the stupid HAMSTER kept me up and made all kinds of horrible noises.

So...

Mr. Sapphire, as we all know, has snakes. Ball pythons are African in origin, as are gerbils. He wanted a cheap snake, and "wild caught" snakes from Africa are about as least expensive as snakes go. They are, however, by repute (and now experience) finicky eaters. Naturally, wild-caught African snake + African-originating gerbils = dinner.

I had no problems with this...at first. I mean, rodents either go in mouse traps or serve as part of the food chain. Then, one day, I meandered to the snake room and noted that he bought a colony of five gerbils. A rodent's a rodent, right? But these little guys stood up on their hind legs and looked at me, kind of like miniature prairie dogs. Still, I don't get attached to rodents, and I left.

The second time I went into the snake room, I saw them. Once again, the stood up on their hind legs. I asked them how they were doing, and they got all excited, running up to the sides of the cage and back. Okay, still no real tugging on the heart strings.

The third time, I talked to them and went to the cage and tapped their little noses. They got up on their little legs and came over, sniffing and running around like they were actually happy to see me.

I thought and thought hard. I went back out for just one more time, and stole the gerbil cage.

They now are housed in three different enclosures. The original colony reproduced, not horribly so, but enough to the point where the older females were ready to kick their daughters out as not to compete with their males, so we had to divide the colony a bit. Most live in one large aquarium and get along just fine. We have bought two more females, little ones, because Anubis, my black one, is going to be bred. I was all excited about the concept until we got him:



He's the offspring of one of our original gerbils. I call him Dreamsicle. As you see, he's snuggling quite comfortably with Anubis, our little black dude.

Here's a better pic of 'Nubi:



I want to make something clear: They are clean, quiet, and soothing. I have them right next to my desk, and am making room for the larger tank. Just looking at them brings them to you, and they are just sweet, sweet, sweet. The kids love to just go by for a minute and put their hands in. They love to shred cardboard and anything paper. It's like having your own little town right under your nose.

Thanks for reading this dissertation on the quality and importance of gerbils in the Sapphires lives.

Slap-happy insomniac, at your service.

Okay, this really isn't a shameless plug for Chick-fil-A, but I've always found their slogan so amusing, especially since my mother's side of the family invested so heavily in milking and making beef.

I have not slept well in many, many nights. I'm excited about my new job. I did another 2000 lines last night all told, and tried to sleep but wasn't able. This on top of another night where I tried to sleep and wasn't able, and this on top...

Well, you get the point.

I now type for doctors who send carbon copies of their cancer treatments to Duke University, to let the almighty Duke know how they're handling the cases. Serious transcription kudos. I have always put Duke on an amazingly high pedestal, and for me to be doing this? Well, it's such a good feeling. I like good feelings. Unfortunately, they make me want to find out more, which makes me remember I'm making money for enjoying myself, which makes me not want to sleep, which leaves me with nights of trying to sleep and not being able...

I actually hunted down this pic for the kids. They're into this thing where they substitute the word "chicken" at the weirdest times. Sephiroth is burning inside with violent chickens--Chicken Broth! Or, whaddup, my chickin'? I ask them what they want for dinner...um, take a guess? They're going to get a surprise when I stock up on nothin' but...chicken. There's a lot that can be done with chicken. I have a George Foreman grill and I am not afraid to use it.

I made a sacrilegious kind of choice this week. You see, I've had a hankering for North Carolina pig pickin' for years, well, since 1987. Unfortunately, you just don't get the "pig pickin' hawg" at just any store, and the halved barrel on which to cook it...plus, you need 25+++ guests to help you down said pig. In an effort to at least appease the taste buds, I bought a pork butt roast and put it in the crock pot.

All you pig pickin' aficionados, please don't flinch. I made a sauce of vinegar, red peppers, hot sauce, garlic powder, ground black pepper, ketchup and salt. I agree with the non-mustard Carolina crowd. I think that's all that went in it. It was very, very good, considering it wasn't smoked but crocked for 12 hours. I do what I can. Next time, I'll try a better cut of meat, but if I was going to ruin something, it was going to be on sale! The kids and Mr. Sapphire groaned about the "tangy" flavor (from the vinegar), so I thought I'd never be able to cook something like that again. However, when I put the leftovers on George (Foreman grill) to dry it out and heat it up, it disappeared. Poof. All those whiny little runts ate my (not really) pig pickin' pork! After they complained about it! I thought it tasted absolutely heavenly, and almost took me to North Carolina on a cloud. It was worth the effort. I would still like to have the drum and the actual hog...wait. Aunt Alice. Hey, now. She actually has pigs - and room for my relatives. This is definitely something to consider, but someone has to start the pig at midnight for noon eatin'. Not a bad deal...

And that's my life in a nutshell. Razzing the kids, working, and gourmet dining ideas. Oh, and monitoring gerbil population explosions. And writing. I did some of that, too. All my work comes from the Internet or a tank system, so I don't have to leave the house. I probably should leave the house, but grocery shopping and trips to the pharmacy and Gasmart are my life. Our gasoline bills have dropped dramatically, and the trips to Gasmart are generally for soda!

Hey, I've rambled on about completely nothing of value, and I like it! Welcome to my dementia..

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades...