What a day! Got this shot of someone’s gorgeous German shorthaired pointer
while I was down at Ace…I’d had my corn snake Nevluk tied up in a bag for 2
days hoping to delay egg-laying. I got a new bag of perlite for the
incubator only to find (on a Sunday night of course) that Ace and K-Mart no
longer carry untreated perlite; the reek of ammonia when I opened the bag
nearly knocked me over and it was Tuesday before my sinuses calmed back
down. Epic freakout time, as I could not find my old bag of untreated
perlite and ammonia is lethal to reptile eggs due to their thin, porous,
absorbent leathery shell. Cue the frantic drag-neighbor-outta-bed moment,
the run to Ace, and when I got home and slapped the laying tank together, I
grabbed Nevluk and stashed her…and a dud egg rolled out of the bag, telling
me she was really just NOT going to wait. (As I keep reminding the
neighbor, some events do not care how he’s feeling or when he wants to get
to it—the chicken in the fridge *isn’t* gonna wait to go bad until you feel
like washing the Foreman grill plate so we can cook it, I think were my
exact words…) Back to the dog, which watched me with this gorgeous golden
side-eye of doom the entire time I was wrestling 2 cubic feet of perlite
into the bed of the truck. For the record, a 2-cu-ft bag of perlite is up
to my waist and is a lifetime supply. For me, not the snakes. They only
need about a cup per clutch, and I’d have to have around 20 *pairs* of
snakes to make a real dent in this sucker! Nevluk doesn’t have many
breeding seasons left before I have to permanently separate these two due to
her age, since if I remember rightly these guys are coming up around 10
years old and pretty soon her risk of egg-binding and other lethal
complications will start rising steeply. In a lot of places, egg-bound
snakes are routinely saved with surgery, but here in the ‘Root one of the
down sides to having an “exotic” pet is that we don’t have a vet trained in
reptiles at all, never mind surgery. Bonus points to anyone who looked at
the pic and wondered why the dog’s on the driver’s side…it’s in an actual
utility vehicle, in this case a little Japanese import. I see a couple of
‘em around town from time to time and will keep an eye out for this lovely
dog the rest of the summer!
while I was down at Ace…I’d had my corn snake Nevluk tied up in a bag for 2
days hoping to delay egg-laying. I got a new bag of perlite for the
incubator only to find (on a Sunday night of course) that Ace and K-Mart no
longer carry untreated perlite; the reek of ammonia when I opened the bag
nearly knocked me over and it was Tuesday before my sinuses calmed back
down. Epic freakout time, as I could not find my old bag of untreated
perlite and ammonia is lethal to reptile eggs due to their thin, porous,
absorbent leathery shell. Cue the frantic drag-neighbor-outta-bed moment,
the run to Ace, and when I got home and slapped the laying tank together, I
grabbed Nevluk and stashed her…and a dud egg rolled out of the bag, telling
me she was really just NOT going to wait. (As I keep reminding the
neighbor, some events do not care how he’s feeling or when he wants to get
to it—the chicken in the fridge *isn’t* gonna wait to go bad until you feel
like washing the Foreman grill plate so we can cook it, I think were my
exact words…) Back to the dog, which watched me with this gorgeous golden
side-eye of doom the entire time I was wrestling 2 cubic feet of perlite
into the bed of the truck. For the record, a 2-cu-ft bag of perlite is up
to my waist and is a lifetime supply. For me, not the snakes. They only
need about a cup per clutch, and I’d have to have around 20 *pairs* of
snakes to make a real dent in this sucker! Nevluk doesn’t have many
breeding seasons left before I have to permanently separate these two due to
her age, since if I remember rightly these guys are coming up around 10
years old and pretty soon her risk of egg-binding and other lethal
complications will start rising steeply. In a lot of places, egg-bound
snakes are routinely saved with surgery, but here in the ‘Root one of the
down sides to having an “exotic” pet is that we don’t have a vet trained in
reptiles at all, never mind surgery. Bonus points to anyone who looked at
the pic and wondered why the dog’s on the driver’s side…it’s in an actual
utility vehicle, in this case a little Japanese import. I see a couple of
‘em around town from time to time and will keep an eye out for this lovely
dog the rest of the summer!
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