My Little Guilt Trips

13th of June, 2015

Usually, out of necessity, I'm a pretty laid back person. There's a lot of stuff that just doesn't bother me. Especially now... I can't feel much of anything. I'd take pretty much anything life could throw at me now... But when it comes to living things that are under my care – living, feeling things, anything that is my responsibility, anything dependent on me... I can't handle it. This is the stuff that I take (very long) guilt trips over. This is the stuff that sticks and won't let go.

So, today I spent a portion of the evening on a massive guilt trip.

If anyone wants to follow me on this little trip...

I have two leopard geckos. I got them when I was just a kid, maybe 11 years old. When I first got them, there was almost no information about their care at all. They were treated like disposable pets – most reptiles were – because they were hardy enough to take that kind of abuse for a while. A long while. Longer than most other small animals. Stick them in a glass terrarium, or even some kind of plastic bin, and they'll survive just about anything. For that matter, they even seem able to survive in plastic drawers for a while.

I tried really hard to find out everything that I could about them... but there was so little out there that even researching as much as I could as an eleven year old, with the help of the local herpetology club, I still couldn't prevent... some problems. Or maybe most of them.

Guilt Trip A - taking a nap

This is the first casualty. "Guilt Trip A", aka Jersey.

Jersey took the brunt of it as I, and the rest of the (mostly too young) herpetile enthusiasts at the time, tried to find out just how to take care of these creatures. (Which in most cases seemed to consist almost entirely of trial and error, at the expense of the little beasties.) Because my bedroom was in a basement at the time, she got very little natural light, and was always in the cold. (For that matter, I was also almost always in the cold but that doesn't belong in this post. That's a whole other story.) At some point, I noticed she wasn't moving very well and when I picked her up... she was... kind of gelatinous. So I rushed off to the closest expert we had available at the time, at the place where I got her, who examined her and told me it was a vitamin D and calcium deficiency. (I was very distressed.) Eventually, with the right supplements and a better light she would recover from this... However, her bones were never the same, so the poor little girl is totally warped and bent in all of her long bones. Moving around is difficult for her. Her eyesight is also pretty poor. For a while I don't think she even had any teeth.

She did recover... and because I was just an insane little kid, eventually, I got myself another one.

Guilt Trip B - striking a pose

This is "Guilt Trip B", aka Sakura, because of her pinkish colouration.

Well, by the time I got her, I was much more prepared and had it a bit more under control. She didn't end up with rubber bones, her eyesight stayed sharp... She was sharp and alert and enjoyed crawling around and observing her surroundings from the top of her den. When my mother would watch them, she said it was like watching Jurassic Park, in miniature...

I loved animals as a kid, but I really was no candidate to be taking care of them, at all. Some part of me, I think, knew that at the time, but when you're just a kid, it's kind of unbearable to be faced with that kind of a limitation. I'm still not any candidate to have anything under my "care", but now for different reasons.

Anyway, so... yeah. I had it more under control by then, that's true. By then, there were more resources available and there was better understanding in the community of the needs of these animals. However... there was still a problem, and it took years for the community to catch on to it. Moisture. When these little guys shed, they seek out moist places in order to help loosen the skin when shedding. Without them, and without adequate scratchy things to rub on, they're often unable to free themselves from their own shed skin completely... and that leads to a lot of problems. I was never, ever able to stay on top of the moisture thing.

The consequence of this is that Jersey now has no toes. Apparently, problems with the toes when shedding is really common. Probably much more common than a lot of people keeping these lizards want to admit to.

So, today. Why I'm writing this. I had to soak the lizards in warm water and then carefully rub the stuck skin off of their toes. However, for some of those little lizardy digits, I was really too late. With Jersey... one of her toes just popped off. With Sakura, I removed the shedding layer of skin only to find that the rest of the flesh underneath had turned white and was also coming off... Not out of extra pressure on my part, just that it had lost all bloodflow from the constriction. I was too late, and it wasn't even really by a long time.

I went online to look up this problem, and try to see if I was doing something bad to them. Often, with animals, excess interference is bad. (People still love to do it, though. "Saving" the baby birds and whatever else... (...Guilty as charged.)) They weren't meant to have a giant animal removing their excess skin. Anyway, I found that this appears to be a really common problem and most people have basically the same solution... soak and then try to rub off whatever skin is stuck. Gently.
I ended up feeling a tiny fraction less guilty, but...
To these creatures, I am basically a monster. A toe-killing, horrible monster. Even more twistedly, a monster who sometimes feeds them wiggly tasty things.

One last thing. My two little lizards here are both about 19 years old by now. When I was a kid, I read about a guy whose leopard gecko lived to almost 30. Nowadays, people seem to think that one of these lizards that reaches maybe 8 years of age is old. Faced with that, it's pretty much impossible to prevent myself from lamenting the fate of the species.