The End of a Chapter: Fat Letta Dies

It is with a heavy heart that I post today about the death of Fat Letta, our 4 + years female veiled chameleon.

She was an overachiever when it came to egg production, and, basically, she just wore herself out. It got to the point where no amount of calcium supplements was going to help her poor, depleted bones. She had trouble hanging onto branches and couldn't make her way around the cage anymore to chase crickets. I had to put crickets in a plastic bowl and hold it within reach of her tonuge.

I'm definitely the person the most broken up about her death. Probably because I ended up being her main caretaker. Even though she was originally Child #2's pet! Over time, I learned to read her pretty well. I could tell when she was ready to lay eggs and needed the 5-gallon Home Depot bucket filled with sand. I could tell when she'd be receptive to Mr. Conehead, her significant other. I was even able to predict her death.

I'll never forget how much self-confidence she gained after laying that first cluch of eggs. Twelve hours digging alone in the cold, damp sand taught her to stand up to Mr. Conehead. She never let him bite her again. She made sure he shared the heat/ultra violet lamp. And she stopped allowing him first crack at the crickets.

The only thing I regret is not keeping one of her female babies. Then, I would've gotten to know one of Fat Letta's daughters, and, somewhere down the road, perhaps one of her granddaughters. But, we sold all the babies to the reptile store in Oceanside. Here's the story. And there's really no way to track one down now. Sadly, there are no surviving eggs from Fat Letta's last clutch.

So, goodbye Fat Letta. I certainly never expected to get attached to a chameleon. But I did.

Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of her.

Fat Letta


An x-ray of Fat Letta full of eggs

My Town Monday: News From the Chameleon Cage

I'm publishing my My Town Monday post early this week because tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, which means the Summy children have the day off school. Who knows what we'll get up to! Chores, haircuts, dental visits. (Kidding!)

Anyway, I've had several emails asking about our veiled chameleons. I figured a My Town Monday post is as good as any to bring you all up to date. So, here goes...

When we got home from our crazy roadtrip to Oklahoma over Thanksgiving, I flipped up the incubator lid to check on the humidity. Whoa!!! There were three baby chameleons completely hatched and wandering around, prancing on the eggs of their brothers and sisters.

Over the next couple of weeks (the end of November through the beginning of December), all the eggs hatched, and we are now the proud owners of THIRTY-TWO beautiful-in-a-reptilian-way babies!! The above photo is one of two cages housing said cutie patooties.

On a sad note, all the babies from the September hatching died. I think there were about 42. It was horrible. It got to the point that I didn't want to check the cages in the morning. :( The bottom line was we couldn't get them to eat. We took a few to a vet who showed us how to handfeed with tweezers. Very time consuming! Unfortunately, though, so many of those babies were deformed that we were fighting a losing battle. Why were so many deformed? No one's really sure. Perhaps the mother laid clutches too close together. Perhaps her calcium deficiency played a part. Perhaps...

On a much happier note, these current babies are eating up a storm of crickets, clambering all over the cage and slurping water off leaves. They have already lived much longer than the last batch. I don't think any of the September babies lasted more than a week while the oldest of these Thanksgiving babies are eight weeks today. It's time to start looking for buyers, and we'll be approaching pet stores and people who sell at reptile shows.

So, we finally did it! We got our male and female adult veileds to mate. We dug up, then incubated the eggs. And now we've got two cagefuls of happy, bouncing baby veiled chameleons (more baby girls than boys). Whew. It's been quite a ride.

After a few weeks, we separated the dominant eaters from the smaller babies. In this photo, I'm holding a small and a larger baby. Quite a difference in size, eh? But both are oh so adorable!



This is the proud mother, Fat Lettie.




This is the proud father, Mr. Cone Head. In reality, neither parent has anything to do with their offspring. Fat Lettie passed us the parenting baton after laying the eggs. Mr. Cone Head was only involved in a very small part of the whole process! Ahem.

And that is where we are with veiled chameleons.

This week, I'm the hostess with the mostest for My Town Monday. So, if you've put up a MTM post, let me know in the comments section here or on the official My Town Monday blog. And I'll link to you on both blogs. Happy Monday!

Romance Reunion Reptile Style

You remember that Mr. and Mrs. Veiled Chameleon are currently residing in separate residences? Basically, she wouldn't share the crickets, and he was fading away to a mere skeleton of his former self.

Recently, Mr. Chameleon escaped and found himself mesmerized by a shiny blue toy sports car. Here's the post.

The other day, I noticed him walking around the bottom of his cage, then on the door. This is unusual because he's a man who likes the top of his cage and the warmth of his heat lamp.

Mr. Chameleon trying to escape twice in a short period of time?

Guess whose cage is right beside his?

Yes, the Mrs.

Is it possible, I wondered, that she's sending out some strong hubba hubba signals?

I put him in her cage.

Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! (That's as graphic as I'm getting.)

There will be more fetilized eggs in our future!

I could've gotten some great photos, even action-packed video. But, oh no. Child #2 wouldn't allow it!!

Sad News from the Chameleon Cage

It is with a heavy heart that I post today.

The first baby veiled chameleon died last night. :(

I could tell the end was coming. We just couldn't get him to eat. Instead of opening his little mouth and sticking out his tongue, he'd walk past the crickets. We tried everything we could think of. Pinhead crickets, small crickets, keeping the baby super hydrated and the cage warm.

Even sadder, the sibling is not far behind. He won't eat either.

I'd read of this online. Baby veileds who won't eat. If the temperature fluctuates or is too hot in the incubator. Our local reptile store thinks the first batch of eggs just wasn't a hardy batch. Of the original 23 eggs, only two hatched. There are still 3 eggs from this clutch in the incubator, but they've pretty much collapsed in on themselves, and I don't think we'll see any births. The other 42 eggs in the incubator are from the second clutch. And, as I've mentioned, the female is heavily pregnant again.

Sigh. This whole pet thing is not for sissies.

News from the incubator!!

Something incredible has happened in our incubator.

Two itsby bitsy teeny weeny baby veiled chameleons fought their way out of their respective egg.

I know you want pictures.

Here's a shot of the deli dish in the incubator. This is the second chameleon battling his way out of his egg. It took each baby over a day to get free of the egg. The first was completely out on Saturday; the second yesterday.

Here's a closer-up shot of the photo above. For the first day or so, the chameleon drags around, from it's tummy, a little ball of egg material. I think it serves as nutrition, but it sure trips up the baby a lot. The little ball shrivels up after a day or two. In this picture, you can see that the baby's has some vermiculite (dirt stuff we put in each deli dish) stuck to him.

Here are the two babies. It's a sibling photo. They're hanging from the top of their cage, bonding and perhaps wondering if any additional brothers or sisters will be showing up. This lighting is not showing up their colors. However, the baby born on Saturday is much greener than the more recent baby, who is a boring brown.

Ahhh.....

You can how they're very cute. Probably the cutest veileds ever laid! And, no, I"m not prejudiced.


Additional details:
-There are three more eggs from this clutch. Hopefully, they'll hatch too.
-These eggs incubated for a little less than six months.
-We still have 45 eggs to hatch. Three of the eggs should hatch any day now. If you do the math, you'll see that we have 42 more eggs that should hatch around the end of Feb.

In other chameleon cage news...the female is pregnant again!! Also, we've separated the male and female. According to the reptile pet store, he's stressed and getting too thin. So, we now have three veiled chameleon cages. Our house is noisy with singing crickets. Craziness!

Oh yeah and...., the female is pregnant again!! We've separated the male and female. According to the reptile pet store, he's stressed and getting too thin. So, we now have three veiled chameleon cages. And our house is noisy with singing crickets. Craziness!
\

She bites him!

This is a picture I took last night of our female veiled chameleon. I could practically be a famous nature photographer!

And onto the news...

Our female chameleon BIT the male!

Holy reptile! But this is unheard of!

He has always been the dominant eater. Pushing her away from the tupperware dish where we release the crickets and worms. Stepping on her if she doesn't move fast enough. Hissing at her.

But she's smart. She figured out there's no reason to run and hide when we creak open the cage door. We're just leaving nibblies.

So, yesterday, I unlatched the door. He scurried off, in the true manner of a frightened bully. She waited on the edge of plastic container. I plopped in three meal worms, a new treat for them.

She focused on them (both eyes looking in the same direction, for a change). She opened her mouth.

Before she could shoot out her sticky-ended tongue, he strutted down the branch, knocked right into her, and gobbled up the three meal worms.

She couldn't believe it. Both her roving eyes registered disbelief. Her mouth still agape, she leaned forward and bit him on the shoulder. There was a brief nose-to-nose face-off, then he backed away.

Here's a grainy picture of him backing away while she stands her ground on the now-empty container. I was shooting through the cage. This is an example of why I'm NOT a famous nature photographer!

So, what's going on? Why is our female veiled suddenly showing chutzpah?

I think all those hours alone in a damp, dark tunnel of wet sand changed our little girl. She wasn't just down there laying twenty-three eggs. She was learning an important lesson about herself. She discovered an inner core of strength and courage. And a bunch of self-esteem.

You go, girl!

And she lays TWENTY-THREE eggs!

Yes, you heard me right. Our little female veiled chameleon laid TWENTY-THREE eggs!!!

About 11:30 am, she began digging a tunnel in a five-gallon planting pot filled with wet sand. She dug deep enough that eventually we couldn't see her. And it was down here, all alone in the dark and the damp, that she laid and then buried 23 eggs.

At 8:30 pm, nine hours after starting the tunnel, our brave and tired little mother finished smoothing out the dirt in the pot. She did such a good job that you couldn't tell anything, much less her precious eggs, were buried there.

Child #2 sprayed her with water because she looked a little dehydrated. You can see the water droplets on her skin. She then climbed up the branch, gobbled a couple of crickets and parked herself under the heat lamp. She lapped water from the dripper off and on.

Here are our incubation supplies. We removed the bucket with the eggs. There are a few plastic deli-like containers with air holes around the sides. We filled these containers with 3/4 inch of damp (because we sprayed it with bottled water) vermiculite (soil-like stuff).

Here's a cluster of half-buried eggs. I set a penny next to them to give you a sense of size. Child #2 removed two mixing bowls full of sand before Child #4 spotted the first egg. The chameleon dug down deep before she began laying.

Child's #2 is holding an egg. He lightly dotted each egg with a Sharpie before removing it from the sand. He wanted to place the egg in the exact same position in the vermiculite. Rotating/flipping a veiled chameleon egg can lead to the embryo drowning in the liquid inside the egg.

This is our $59 incubator. We've set the temperature at about 80 degrees fahrenheit. This temp should result in an incubation period of about 170 days (shorter than with a lower temp) and active hatchlings with a good appetite. For veiled chameleons, gender is GSD (genetic set determination, meaning gender was set at the time of conception) and not TSD (temperature-dependent sex determination where certain incubation temperatures produce females and certain temps product males). Crocodiles, for example, are TSD.

And now we wait, the eggs safe and warm and hydrated (we'll have to keep them moist for the next several months), to see if the eggs hatch. There's a chance these eggs weren't fertilized, but were a test-run for her. Yikes.

And what was the male chameleon doing during the female's whole ordeal? Sunning himself under the lamp and chasing down the odd cricket. No tidying up of the cage, no arranging for a week's worth of meals, no decorating the babies' room. :)

All in all, this veiled chameleon experience has been a fun one!

sources:
http://www.chameleonnews.com/?page=article&id=119
http://www.biol.vt.edu/faculty/andrews/And_JEZ08.pdf

Big News in the Summy Household

Child #2 holds his two veiled chameleons. The colorful one on the left is the male.

Our female veiled chameleon may be gravid!! As in, with eggs.

She is lumpy in the hip area. And has developed coloring that includes small blue-ish "robin egg" circles. Also, for the first time ever, she ventured to the bottom of the cage, presumably searching for somewhere to bury her eggs.

The female veiled sleeps on a fake branch.


It was truly heart-warming to see how the lumpy-hipped female veiled galvanized Child #2 into action. (Child #2 will turn 16 this summer. Yikes!). He googled all manner of info, then filled a five-gallon bucket with sand from Child #4's sandbox. He placed said bucket in the cage, a reptile bassinette, if you will.

To some, a 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot. For others, a veiled chameleon bassinette.


Quite frankly, I'm amazed the female ever agreed to "special time" with the male. His behavior toward her borders on abusive. He pushes her out of the way and eats his fill of crickets or wax worms before allowing her close to the bowl. He is not good father material. Although, in her defense, he's the only game in town. I imagine this is how she rationalized things about a month ago.

Will keep you posted regarding expected due dates, baby showers, meet-the-in-laws dinner, etc.

And a little bit of trivia: The verb "galvanize" came into our language around 1802 from the French verb galvanizer. Apparently, a physicist named Luigi Galvani was conducting experiments where he ran electric current through dead frogs' legs. I'm sorry I looked this up. I may be less inclined to use the verb now.

source:http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=galvanize

A veiled chameleon falls ill...

Here's a picture from healthier days. The male veiled chameleon drinking water from a ficus leaf






You may or may not remember that Child #2 became the proud owner of two veiled chameleons. They were his big birthday present about a year and a half ago. Then, last May, the female died.

Well, last week, the male stopped eating, got big knobby and swollen joints and was barely crawling around. Thursday evening, Child #2 (who is fifteen, and I'm sure that one word, fifteen, tells you a lot) spent much time wringing a wet facecloth above his still chameleon so that a gentle rain cascaded over his pet. The chameleon turned the most beautiful turquoise we have ever seen.

Fast forward ten minutes. I tucked in Child #3 who shares a room with Child #2. The chameleon had fallen off his little log and was lying at the bottom of the cage. His eyes were somewhat sunken; his eyelids dark. Oh dear. I did not want Child #2 to Learn a Life Lesson that evening. He'd already had a water polo disappointment; he still had a lot of homework; and he needed a decent night's sleep. So, I dusted the little chameleon off and propped him back up on the log. We could all face the Life Lesson in the morning, or better yet, after school.

Imagine my surprise the next morning when I saw the chameleon had crawled a little higher up the log. DH had the day off. We got the kids to their various schools, then carefully placed the chameleon on a bed of his special mossy stuff in a cut-off milk jug and drove him to the reptile expert at the pet store. Yes, this is what happens during these crazy busy times of Christmas and a book launch when you're the parent of a child with a pet. Don't think I'm some kind of saint. I'm not. I wasn't happy with the turn of events, with the to-do list sitting at home on the kitchen counter and the milk jug on my lap as we headed into San Diego.

The reptile expert took one look at our fat-jointed lethargic chameleon and pronounced: Metabolic Bone Disease.

It's curable! I texted Child #2 who responded with Yay!!!

Now our chameleon is eating crickets dusted with calcium powder + extra Vitamin D for absorption, housed in a smaller cage so he's always close to the UV + heat lamp, basking on fake wood laced with fake ficus leaves which stay stable for his sore joints. With proper care and a certain measure of good luck, he will live to a ripe old age. When he's a little bigger, we'll find him a female and help him settle into married life. It'll have to be a female accepting of gnarled joints because these won't return exactly to normal. This is all doable.

And now I up with insomnia, working through the to-do list, because...
IT'S EXACTLY TWO DAYS UNTIL TUES DEC 9 AND THE RELEASE OF I SO DON'T DO MYSTERIES!

I would post an updated picture of the chameleon, but the entire house is quiet and sleeping as it's only a little after 3:00 am.

In sad chameleon news...

Today's post is a downer. Sorry, but that's the way life goes sometimes. Blogging is not all fun and games.

I'm sad to report that our feisty female veiled chameleon died. Yes, that same female who hogged the crickets and hissed at the male when he tried to eat.

We don't know what happened. She stopped eating and drinking. Then, this weekend, she stopped breathing.

In response, the male has been munching up a storm, totally hanging out on the rim of the tupperware container where we dump the crickets. This morning, he even scarfed down two wax worms (a first for him).

I prefer to believe this cricket-and-wax-worm orgy is his form of a chameleon wake. Not that he was pleased to see her go. Or, worse yet, that he somehow plotted her demise. No, no, no.

The female's passing was commemorated by a short ceremony at the bottom of our garden. Child #4 officiated and spoke kindly of the female chameleon, noting her ability to look in different directions at the same time and change to various shades of green.


Chameleon grave

In exciting veiled chameleon news...

For the absolute first time ever, one of our veiled chameleons ate a wax worm!!! Yay!

Yes, it was the female. That same bossy female who outweighs the male and hisses at him when he comes to munch gut-loaded crickets from the tupperware container in their cage.

Gut-loaded crickets? That's when you feed the crickets good healthy food like apples and carrots. Because whatever they eat ends up nourishing the chameleons. It's all that food-chain stuff you learned in science.

What's the big deal about wax worms? They last way, way longer than crickets. You can keep wax worms FOR A MONTH in the fridge where they stop wriggling and go dormant. Then you pull some out, let them warm to room temp and pop them, all moving and squirming, into the chameleons' cage.

And what do those of us in the know call veiled chameleons? Veileds.

Why am I giving you all this interesting trivia? So that you will be a hugely fascinating and popular hit at your next cocktail party!

Any pets at your place?

A Writerly Weekend

male veiled chameleon drinking water from a ficus leaf

shedding female veiled chameleon

Before I leave you all for a weekend of fun with my current manuscript, my very cute galleys, my Flip dictionary and my Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus (See! I really am a girl who knows how to have a good time!), here are the latest photos of our veiled chameleons.

The female has shed yet again. She's quite the little lardette compared to the male. Not to panic anyone, but the future of veiled chameleons in this particular cage lies with these two reptiles.

Someone needs to have a serious chat with the female about the birds and the bees and the Golden Rule. Reproductively speaking, it may be unwise of her to hog the crickets and hiss at the male when he wants to eat. Because, at some point, she'll be ready to procreate. And he's her only choice.

For this Family Life chat, I nominate Child #2. After all, it was his brilliant idea to breed veiled chameleons. He's the one who plans to get rich (or at least keep himself well stocked in candy) by selling baby chameleons to pet stores.

So, good luck Child #2 with your first foray into parenting and THE talk.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Bonne fin de semaine!