# The Potato Princess & Her Siblings



## Lilysmommy

So I thought I'd start a thread for sharing pics & stories of Bindi. And because I take as many pics (more, to be honest, since Bindi spends most of our social time sleeping) of the snake & crabs, I'd like to share pics of them here too, if no one minds! I just like showing off my babies. :lol:

Pictures of the Potato Princess first, of course!

I got a fantastic selfie with her a while ago. I can't remember if I posted it here, but I don't think I did.


Got these very cute pics of her a couple nights ago before I put her away for the night.


Peekaboo!


And I swear, she doesn't know she's a hedgehog. She's so SNUGGLY! I meant to put her away to go to bed...and instead I laid down with her on my chest and she immediately crawled up to my neck and snuggled in. So of course it was 15 more minutes before I actually put her away. :lol: 


Next up is the crabs. Here's a picture of their new tank set up!


I love it so far. Easy to get the water dishes out, they have a ton of shells available, they can go from one end of the tank to the other without touching the ground if they don't want. Lots of cover too, but still a few places of clear sub where they can dig down. Here's hoping they'll soon forgive me for putting them in prison while I did this and actually come out to enjoy this! :roll: Sam and Pippin are the only ones I've seen all week any time I've checked the tank.

This is Pippin hanging out in the DIY mangrove tree I made. First time I've caught someone in it, so I was really excited! Not a very close picture, but I couldn't get closer without the flash reflecting off the glass to hide the whole picture.


And here's my pretty girl, Sam, hanging out on the mopani log. She just moved into this shell since I rearranged the tank, it's one of the new ones I put in. She was super excited about all of the new choices!


And finally, Charis, our ball python. I have a bunch of pictures of her because she's just so photogenic! Her social time is mostly spent with her exploring & checking things out, so I also have more opportunities to get pictures in the first place. She's been out every day this week since Tuesday (she ate Saturday, so no handling Sun or Mon) and has done awesome. She's just such a calm, sweet snake. She really seems to enjoy coming out & checking things out. And I love it because a) I get to interact with her and b) it's super easy enrichment!

Here's my snake selfie to match my Bindi one.  Took this a few days ago when I first got her out.


The same night I handed her off to the roommate after a while and she ended up like this for a short bit before it was exploration time again. 


Not a great picture at all, my roommate was too far away from us (didn't move closer to avoid scaring Charis back) and I had to crop it. But she spent last night's social time exploring our chair & had a great time. Here she is peeking out around the arm.


She also curled up under & behind one of the pillows for a bit. She matches the chair color so well. How fashionable! :lol:


Tonight's social time was great for me. She was in her hot spot warming up when I went to get her out. She decided I was an acceptable replacement & was content for once to snuggle up in my hoodie and stay put for the most part. I got these adorable pictures of her peeking out of my sleeve!





I got so lucky with both of my "big" girls (big compared to the crabs :lol. They're both huge sweethearts!! So calm & good-natured, especially compared to usual behavior shown by both of their species.


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## FinnickHog

Oh my goodness Bindi is so cute! I can't believe how snuggly she is! Her poor eye looks a little goopy in the first picture. I hope she's all better soon!

The crab enclosure looks fantastic. The mangrove you made is so cool! Hopefully everyone else resurfaces soon. And Sam's new shell is super pretty. I'm guessing the racing stripe down the middle makes it go faster :grin:. I haven't caught my smaller crab in the front of the tank yet, so I don't have a picture, but he picked one of the thick black and white shells you gave them.

Charis is such a sweetie. Most ball pythons are pretty laid back, but the fact that she chooses to hang out with you is awesome. I have to scoop Illidan when I want him. He'd rather climb out of his enclosure himself and go for a stroll. I love sleevesnake! It's the best kind of snake. You know where they are, they're warm, they're comfy, they can't get into trouble. And it's super cute. Perfect. Her head is so little compared to Illidan's. One day his head just wasn't baby sized anymore. I'm not sure what happened :lol:. Do you know how old Charis is? She's such a big girl with such a little head!


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## Lilysmommy

Me too.  I still feel like she's a little snufflier than I'd like...I'm switching to fleece today to see if it helps at all. I've been getting teeny splinters from the Reptibark when I put a hand down and lean in to grab things, so it's made me a bit paranoid! So we're going to see how fleece works for now until I have time & money to finish plans for a bioactive set up & see how it works.

And thanks!  I keep meaning to make it a little more open one of these times when I'm redecorating, but I always have too many things I want to cram in. :lol: Seems to work out well though! And yes, the racing stripe totally lets her zoom around, heh. I'm so glad your crabs are enjoying the shell selection!

I still have to scoop Charis out, though I've thought about leaving the lid open to see if she'll come out on her own. But the lid isn't lockable or anything and I'm paranoid that if she gets in the habit of "hey neat, I can CHOOSE to get out that way?", I'll forget to put the heavy box back on top one night & she'll get out. Her enclosure has to be snake-proof since Bindi's isn't!! Totally not trying out that animal meeting.

But once I have her upgraded enclosure that actually has lockable doors, we'll try that out & see how much chooses to come out & explore. She does seem to enjoy it, but it's so hard to tell! I mostly go off the fact that she's not showing any distress or panicky movements or acting super defensive or nervous while exploring & does want to explore & smell things. She does seem to like hanging out on us though, until she finds something more interesting...like underneath the couch or behind bookshelves. :lol: 

Yeah, I have no clue about her head! She's 8 years old, so she's fully grown. But her head does seem really small compared to the rest of her. It's what made me panic over whether she could actually eat the rat the first time I fed her. :lol: I know they unhinge their jaw, they can stretch really wide, etc. etc., but none of that helped my first-time snake mom jitters.


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## FinnickHog

Well I'll be sending good vibes her way until she's all better! That's too bad about the reptibark, I haven't been getting those at all. But I do know what you mean. I get them off of some of the brands of reptile and amphibian soil and they are AWFUL.

Yeah you may want to wait on teaching Charis how to escape :lol:. Definitely don't want a surprise introduction to Bindi to occur. 

You really can tell the difference with whether they like it or not. I find if they're not just looking for warm dark places, or they are, but then they stick their head out, they're enjoying it in at least some sense of the word. When I let my skink go, she dives for the nearest dark place and vanishes. One time she couldn't find anything so she "hid" behind the 1" wide leg of a stool. She clearly prefers to be held or in my clothing.

Wow, Charis is a bit older than Illidan then. I guess she just has a cute little head :lol:.


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## Lilysmommy

Thank you!! I'm debating whether to call the vet this morning & let them know my concerns or wait until I've switched to fleece and see if it helps at all. I gave her less Wellness meat last night hoping she might eat more of her kibble, but I'm not sure she really did. I need to get it out & measure, but there's still a lot left...

I agree, I really do think she's enjoying it or finds it to be interesting. I was a little worried at first that maybe I would miss some small body language or signals of distress since I'm so new to snakes & reptiles in general, but nothing she does gives off any warning signals to me. She'll jump a little if one of us grabs her to move her if she's not expecting it, but that seems pretty justified. :lol: She doesn't really freak out or get super defensive or upset about it.

Maybe her head is similar to how my ****er spaniel kept her blunt little puppy nose for her whole life? :lol: It was really cute!

Side story - after I posted about Charis biting me on my family Facebook, apparently I freaked several family members out despite my assurances that it honestly was not bad at all, it was my fault, she wasn't aggressive, etc. etc. I've had at least three family members plus my partner keep telling me to be careful, especially with the snake selfie picture. So I finally got annoyed and posted a status pointing out that Bindi's bitten me 5-6 times more than Charis, it hurts more, and she's way more likely to bite me in general than the snake! :lol: Might as well tell me to be careful holding the hedgehog, people! But my snake is not a threat to me, so please stop acting like she's a monster, seriously. Bites happen, it healed in less than a day, and she's still a perfect angel. Though I did also mention that so far no one has told me that my baby is gross, ugly, or creepy, and no one's made comments about how they would hurt or kill her if she was near them, so that's appreciated, at least. I've heard too many stories from snake/reptile owners who have friends & family members think it's okay to say that to them.  I think everyone on there knows me well enough to know that Charis is also my baby and I would NOT take that well.


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## twobytwopets

Omg Kelsey, be careful of hedgie bites, and snake bites, and hermit bites, and mosquito bites, and bee stings, and clowns, and door to door salesmen. I think I covered all major threats in your area. 
Common sense says if something bites you over and over, keep it away from things you really don't want bitten. I'm sure that if Charis was biting you everytime you had her out, you would keep her away from your face. It's not like she is a copperhead!


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## FinnickHog

Aww your puppy dog sounds like she was adorable!

Ugh, people drive me nuts sometimes. Yes, snake bites can be really awful, but all the commonly kept ones (balls, corns, other small colubrids...) wouldn't be commonly kept if they were dangerous, or even if they hurt all that bad. Hedgehog bites are way worse in comparison. Those little demon teeth are scary. Worse than that is when I upset my parrot. Now THAT hurts! And sometimes she prefers to not let go. My last parrot (only 5 inches tall) punctured my finger to the bone once and then chewed. I know some reptile people who keep massive monitor lizards but won't go near parrots because they're scary :lol:. I don't plan to experience my green tree python's bite. I got to see those teeth when I was force feeding him, and yikes. No thanks. But with my other two snakes, I let them lick my nose and wrap around my face, so that tells you how afraid of their bites I am. My family has just given up warning me, and instead has decided to come watch me feed them.

I'm glad everyone has at least been polite about Charis. Telling you your snake is disgusting is practically the same as telling you your human baby is disgusting. It's just not nice. And those weirdos that need to share the fact that they would kill your pet if it came near them... They worry me. Do they not see that you care for it, and does that not have any weight at all in their minds? When my boyfriend rescued Shaw the Salamander from the pipe plant (he's named after the company) where he works, one of the female employees threatened to stomp on it. She then discussed in great detail how she would like to cut it into small pieces so it didn't look so gross anymore. She's also threatened to hurt ... well, most of my "creepier" pets. So she's never welcome anywhere near me. I'm one of those people who catches and releases tiny spiders in the house though. Or I just say hi and then ignore them :lol:. That drives my arachnophobic other half nuts.


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## twobytwopets

Was the last bird a parrotlet?


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## FinnickHog

He was a little rose crowned conure. He was a rescue, I believe an illegal import, and he was a mess. I only had him 4 years before he passed away from who knows what. Avian medicine and diagnostics have a long way to go. Screaming, biting, feather plucking and mutilation, you name it, he did it. One time he seemingly intentionally snapped a blood feather during rush hour and the vet was an hour away in normal traffic. I loved him to bits, but wow he was a butt. Here's a video of him playing basketball while he was an absolute mess: 



. He got better gradually, and then when I thought we were through the worst, he passed while I was right beside him. Once second he was fine, and the next he wasn't.

Though I was in contact with a breeder regarding a parrotlet before I decided to rescue. I hear they latch on pretty good.


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## twobytwopets

When we raised birds we had from parrotlet up to umbrellas. 
One of my African greys broke my husbands knuckle. He still says he will take 5 bites from a grey over one bite from a parrotlet. They are demon birds!


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## FinnickHog

I definitely prefer the bone-breaking, full-beak pressure bird bites to the little pinchey bites. Pinchers are in a pain class all of their own! And exponentially worse than ball python bites, for the record. :lol:


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## twobytwopets

I'm with you on that. Ball python bites are so minor compared to some birds. The little ones can't get anything solid to bite. Only had one big bird that preferred to bite just skin. That was one of my ekkies. But with him it was just one week a month he would do that, and it was only me. 

Still to this day, most pain is compared to bird bites. Hedgehog bites aren't even on the scale


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, the hedgehog bites seriously hurt more, even though I'm lucky & Bindi doesn't hold on long. I mean, seriously, while I was running water over the cuts from Charis's bite, I was already comparing and contrasting it to other animal bites. :lol: Everything else has hurt worse - hedgehog, turkey vulture, parrots, woodchuck, hermit crab pinches...everything. The parrots were definitely worst, followed by the hermit crab pinch. I've been bitten by an Amazon, a Quaker, budgies (okay, they really weren't bad to me), and a conure. The Amazon was definitely bad. She held on - she was ready to take my finger off. I still feel bad about it, but I actually shoved her off with a branch because I couldn't take it any longer. And then a few weeks after, I had a conure bite the exact same spot. :roll: It belonged to my friend's brother & is highly unsocialized (among other problems...I'm still so tempted to go steal the bird, but they're in Virgina). The Amazon was going for crushing, the conure sliced me pretty good.

Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only weirdo who does comparisons of animal bites. :lol: I knew I found my people on here.

I do hope my family will eventually get used to Charis and stop being so nervous about her. I don't even know if anyone will end up meeting her, as I'm not likely to take her on a road trip to Michigan anytime soon. Depends on if anyone comes to visit me, I guess. Unless someone has an outright snake phobia, I may try to convince them to meet her - I really don't understand how someone could dislike her unless they do have a phobia. Phobias I understand all too well though. And your boyfriend's coworker sounds absolutely awful!!! :-x I don't blame you a BIT for not wanting her anywhere near you or your babies. I'm the same way with spiders, but my roommate is also arachnophobic - they have a general insect/bug phobia, worse with somethings, not as bad with others. It's bad enough they can't even kill most bugs, they just get the heck away from them. We established long before we moved in together that if they have a spider or other bug in their room, they should come get me, even if they have to wake me up. The only thing I can't handle is centipedes...one of my two phobias! If we get house centipedes, we're both living on the street. :lol:


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## FinnickHog

Ooooh centipedes. They bother me. A lot. Some of the vendors who go to the reptile shows stock those vicious, evil, giant ones. Yucky! They're about the only thing I can't handle.


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## Lilysmommy

Ahhhh nope nope nope. Terrified of them. Millipedes I can handle & suppress the shivers. Centipedes are No Way. I did read a post (I think on Tumblr?) from someone who once got one specifically because they were afraid of them. And they discussed how they learned more about their behaviors & how the centipede would actually move empty insect exoskeletons all to one pile, and would move colored stones & other little things around the enclosure, etc. It was very interesting...but still don't want one anywhere near me!

Also...I meant to mention, and I may add this to my original post so people see it there too. I have an animal-related Tumblr blog - http://fantasticbeastsandhowtokeepthem.tumblr.com/ I try to keep it well-maintained & have my queue set to two posts a day. I have posts about my animals queued up for one a day for at least the next few days still. I also have tags for each of the animals if anyone is only interested in searching for those posts. Other than my pets, I reblog animal pictures, and a lot of animal care & health things. Everything from dogs & cats to birds, reptiles, wildlife, small mammals, etc. Fish stuff too, occasionally. I mostly reblog right now and I'm trying to get better about posting about my own creatures! I plan to post about my bioactive and raw diet research too, once I get going on that again. (Also if anyone doesn't have a Tumblr & just looks through the blog, I apologize in advance because some of the text is screwed up and shows as the same color as the background...no clue why, and I keep meaning to find a better theme!)


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## FinnickHog

That's so weird. I can do millipedes too. I actually had that in my last post and took it out. Centipedes are interesting, for sure. But I don't want to own one the way I do with pretty much everything else on the planet.

Ooh I know what I'm doing the rest of the day! :grin:

Edit/Addition: The betta you reblogged a few days ago looks exactly like my first betta, Miso!


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## twobytwopets

I married one of those "the only good snake...." People. Growing up we had them as pets, caught them in the wild. In eastern Kansas you could see that being an issue. To me that was normal growing up stuff. Now living in rural Appalachia, I can't teach my boys to go snake hunting, we have too many copperheads. 

I am glad other people catch spiders in the house and let them go... It's irrevelant that we let 5 more bugs in while we take the one out.


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## Lilysmommy

Ashley - for me it's the legs. They stick out so much more with centipedes. Plus centipedes are faster and a lot (all?) of them are carnivorous. At least millipedes are just harmless detritivores and herbivores! And awww, Miso twin! 

And yeah, Two, I really need to look up the local snakes, what they look like, and what to be careful of before spring & summer get here. I want to start going hiking & such more, but I'm from Michigan. I'm fairly certain Michigan is the tamest state in the country...we don't really have anything big and dangerous (black bears that would rather run away, wolves that are more interested in your dog & cat than you), only two venomous spiders & not in large numbers, and only one venomous snake that is endangered & almost never seen. It's also not aggressive at all & tries to stay away from people. So I don't have much in the way of wilderness skills, unless you count driving in snow. :lol:


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## octopushedge

What a great Tumblr, Kelsey! I had no idea your workplace was so cool too. I've been on the fence about getting a tumblr again and this may push me over it just so I can follow you! It's so nice to see a change from the non-stop stream of tv show gifs


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## twobytwopets

Snakes you have rattlers, cotton mouths or water moccasins, and some copperheads. You have bobcats, but not large numbers. Coyotes, in good numbers. You have snapping turtles. Black widows and brown recluse, but I never seen any in 17 years there.


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## Lilysmommy

The snakes are all I'm worried about! I doubt bobcats would come anywhere near a human anyway, and same with coyotes. They seem pretty easy to avoid. We have both in MI too, though very few bobcats. We actually have a huge coyote overpopulation right now and I still never saw them. Snapping turtles I try to help if they need it, as long as they don't eat my hand. :lol: And I have a major water phobia, so I'm not getting in the water with anything anyway. The spiders are a bit iffier - we think we had brown recluse in the basement of the house, but we weren't positive. But my friend's mom was bit by one years ago & they're both very jumpy about them, so we had the exterminator come anyway. I'll definitely be looking up the snakes though!


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## shinydistraction

I don't live anywhere near you, but we have coyotes here. I've seen the buggers waiting at the corner to cross the street. More than once. Last year in the middle of the night there was a huge racket outside. My husband went to see what it was. Turned out to be a coyote having a snack from our garbage can. He was only the distance of a garage door away from it. Needless to say, my husband left him to his dinner and we dealt with the mess the next day. And we're in a cute little subdivision. Sort of on the edge of town, but still pretty well developed. They coyotes here are not shy. I'm sure if you see one they'll try to avoid you, but be careful anyway if you're going to be out and about. I'd at least want to have a stout walking stick with me.


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## twobytwopets

I've encountered some back home in pretty rural areas that were pretty brave. 
Here... We had a family on the farm... The female world stand about 10 feet from us... 
Yes coyotes generally would rather leave you be, but you still want to be mindful of them when your out near them.


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## FinnickHog

I used to get coyotes back when I lived in the city. There was one in my alley one time and the kids from the neighborhood thought it was a stray dog and were trying to wrangle it. That freaked me out pretty good. It eventually just ran away.

I hear them out here at night but I haven't seen one yet. I won't leave my dog out on his own though just in case. He'd try to start a fight.

I'm jealous about the venomous snakes. We supposedly get rattlesnakes here but I don't know anyone who has ever seen one. And that's it. Everything scary avoids Alberta because it would freeze to death. :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

Jeeze, good to know. I know I've heard of them being in yards & going after dogs & cats in MI, but I've not heard of them being quite that bold!! Even from friends/family in rural areas.

Come visit me, Ashley, I'll let you go first if we see any venomous snakes!! :Lol: I do think they're gorgeous, but I do admit to being a bit nervous at the thought of encountering one in the wild.


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## Lilysmommy

I'm so excited! I finally found something my princess likes more than sleeping underneath her litter pan.





I bought it from Petsmart on a whim, thinking it might be low enough to squish her, which seems to be what she's after. She rejected it at first and I was more than a bit disappointed. :lol: But she's been sleeping in it the past three nights!!  Money well spent!

On a less happy note, I think she still sounds a bit too snuffly & her nose is still wetter than I'd like.  I think I'm going to call the vet tomorrow after work and let her know and see if I can bring Bindi along when I take Charis in for her first vet appointment on Thursday. She's been on the antibiotics for almost a week & a half, so it seems like she should've had more improvement by now. We'll see what the vet says, I guess. At least she's still eating, running, pooping, all of that good stuff. The probiotics are helping as well, her poop hasn't gotten too bad at all even with the antibiotics.


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## Soyala_Amaya

Henry and Qwerty have vet appointments tomorrow too. Qwerty just needs his 6 months physical, Henry's foot is swollen and it looks like the bacterial infection from September is trying to come back. It really worries me because I changed EVERYTHING in his cage. New fleece, new hides, new pom poms in his dig box...the only thing the same is his coroplast and I scrubbed that with the super industrial PDI wipes that I got when Qwerty had his c. diff infection.


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## Lilysmommy

Booo, that sucks!  Poor Henry. Good luck with your vet appointments, I hope they can figure something out for Henry! I talked to a receptionist at my vet today & she said it should be fine to bring Bindi in tomorrow for a recheck when we go with Charis. Luckily my roommate is off work & coming along, so I'll have someone to help with animal juggling. 

Also I'm a poor excuse for a mama...I realized last week that I can't find nail clippers ANYWHERE. :roll: I had some and I have no clue where they went. I'm probably going to make a Walgreens run tonight to go get some because Bindi's back nails are getting entirely too long. Really should've picked some up before now! Hopefully she'll cooperate so I can trim at least a few. At least they don't seem to be long enough to start bothering her yet. She's up & on her wheel & crunching food when I settle in to go to bed and usually still on her wheel when I wake up in the mornings.  Very comforting to hear her going about her business!


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## shinydistraction

Nail clippers. I swear those things are like scissors. You own 50 of them, but can't find a single one. So what do you do? Go buy more! Which will be lost within a few weeks. Thus the cycle begins again. And then you get a new pair, can't find it, but found the pair you were originally looking for but couldn't find :roll:


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## twobytwopets

I swear I own about 50 pairs of animal nail clippers. Some are deliberate, can't trim my boxers nail with the little hedgehog clippers. But most are just replacements for ones I put in a safe place. Only to realize that they aren't in safe place.. OK maybe I forgot where the safe place was. 
Now I have a couple different kinds in my med box, but refuse to use them or they will be missing when I NEED them.


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## Lilysmommy

Bindi's inside my shirt for cuddle time tonight, snuggled against my side. Anyone who says hedgehogs can't be cuddly haven't felt soft hedgie belly fur against their stomach. Not sure how I got so lucky with this little girl!


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## HermitHog

Bindi is so adorable! She truly is shaped like a potato! Just curious, what size tank do the crabs live in?


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## Lilysmommy

Thank you! 

They're in a 55 gallon tank at the moment. I have wistful dreams of upgrading them to a 75 gallon eventually, or possibly skipping a couple steps & going right for 90 or whatever the next size up is (110? 115? I'm not sure). I have a chronic problem of wanting bigger and bigger habitats for my pets. :lol: Bindi & Charis are both getting upgrades sometime this year too, hopefully, before the crabs. They're easier to move than the crabs!


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## Lilysmommy

Bindi liner-dove last night. *SIGH* I "punished" her by getting her out for daytime cuddles. :lol: We cuddled for a couple hours in bed, which turned out to be a good thing because then I slept through her usual cuddle time. Woops!

I have some pictures that I'll try to post tomorrow as I'm heading to bed soon. But wanted to share that I just ordered insects for her tonight! Mealworms, crickets, dubia roaches, hornworms, phoenix worms, and fly larvae (yeah, maggots). 1000 mealworms will start out a colony. The crickets are going straight in the freezer because I don't have a good container in which to keep them in for gutloading, but I think I'll be able to gutload the roaches first as they don't jump everywhere. And the other three things will keep for a while in the fridge door.

I think I may also try ordering a no-escape insect feeder bowl on Amazon. Does anyone have any experience with them for hedgies or other animals? I feed Bindi mealworms directly, but would like to leave some things in her cage for her, like the phoenix worms and maggots. They seem like they'll be pathetic enough not to escape anyway. :lol: I don't trust the hornworms no matter what I put them in, they'll be fed directly or frozen first. Same for roaches. My roommate might murder me if they get loose, so I can't take any chances, hah. 

I meant to give her some pieces of a commercial raw dog food I bought, but the bag sat out for longer than I meant on the counter. It smelled really awful when we opened the bag tonight (even though it's been frozen since), so I don't trust it. It was only a sample bag, at least, so only cost $4. So no extra treats tonight, but I still have cans of grasshoppers & snails. And she got her last dose of antibiotics tonight, so we can finally start trying new things regularly again. Think we might try out the snails tomorrow night!


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## Soyala_Amaya

I've got some of those bowls if you want to try one before buying. They work fairly well for smaller insects, but supers and hornworms escape them fairly easily.

Besides, you need to come meet the new rats anyway


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## Lilysmommy

That would be great! I have a bag of Fromm's to bring you anyway, I bought it and don't think I'm going to bother opening it - she's not touching her kibble much at all since she has the Wellness pouches & I'm fine with that since I'm hoping to introduce commercial raw soon anyway! Either that or we can stick with the Wellness pouches until I do a food order. And yessss, new ratties!!


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## Lilysmommy

Well, bad news from my crew. I finally made myself check today...Boromir, one of my original three hermit crabs, is dead.  He was in mid-molt, still soft, when I moved everyone to the apartment at the beginning of December. I was hoping he would pull through left in an isolation tank, but it looks like he probably died pretty early on. Logically I know it's not my fault. But as usual, try telling my emotions that! :roll: We didn't even make it to a one-year anniversary together. 

I took care of his tank and was able to move Merry, in the 10g isolation tank, up to where Boromir's had been. This is at least a good thing for Merry, because being raised up off the floor has already raised the tank temperature by 5 degrees. I'm pretty sure Merry is molting in there, so hoping they come up okay sometime in the next month or so.

In the main tank, at least Frodo and Eowyn have dug down and I'm nervous about that - I found an exoskeleton leg while spraying the tank today, and hoping whoever it belonged to didn't get attacked while molting. It's not usual for a lot of the exo to be left, so me & a mod from my crabby forum are hoping that maybe someone stumbled in on the molter & scared them off before they finished their exo? Trying to stay positive. Sam's been missing in the past day or two, so I'm thinking she may have burrowed as well. Just Shelob & Pippin left aboveground - the biggest & the littlest! 

Shelob stays in the moss pit sleeping all day & won't come out until the evening when it's darker. She's been pretty shy since she came up from molting. I think it's probably to do with the fact that she's been in captivity for the shortest amount of time, and she was also in the wild for the longest - she's the one I got from the pet store last October, and she's a large crab, which means she's at least a good 10-15 years old, I'm sure. I'm sure it's hard to adjust to captivity after that long in the wild!  Poor girl. Pippin doesn't seem to mind me much & comes out during the day occasionally. They're out right now bulldozing their way around the flower/leaf dish since I just put fresh mixes in. Glad someone's enjoying it, at least. 

Oh, and a hedgie update - Bindi got a couple snails last night with the rest of her food. This morning, both are gone. They have approval from the princess! I'm starting to think this girl will eat anything as long as it doesn't scare her by moving. :lol: So far she's eaten everything I've offered, including two flavors of Wellness pouches (with 2-3 more to try out), cooked chicken, canned crickets, canned snails, and broccoli (which I'm so confused and amused by, I wasn't expecting her to touch that). We'll try snails and maybe broccoli again tonight and try canned grasshoppers tomorrow or Wednesday. Her insect order will be here by then too, so then we can really have fun. :lol:


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## FinnickHog

Oh no, poor Boromir! Darn sensitive little guys. Hopefully the rest pop back up soon, and the leg isn't anything serious to worry about.

Snails are a hot commodity around here too! Finnick loves them. I think he likes them even more than mealworms. I mix them into Rocket the skink's homemade "Skink Chow" so I always have some handy, and Finn is totally okay with being woken up in the afternoon to have a snail or two while I'm making food for Rocket.

Can't wait to see how the broccoli goes with Bindi! Rocket likes it but no one else around here will go anywhere near it.


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## Soyala_Amaya

So that was my problem...everything I tried to feed her was alive, except for those freeze dried mealies. Silly picky girl!

I am sorry about Boromir, though. He had a good several months with you though, and I'm sure will be part of your welcoming committee one day.


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## Lilysmommy

Thanks guys!  I have my fingers crossed for the other crabbies.

And yeah, apparently if it won't move at her and is nice & squishy, it's fair game? :lol: She got two more snails last night & they're both gone, along with all of the Wellness meat. I'm still trying to figure out how much to give her of that. I think she got about half a pouch last night and still ate it all, but doesn't look like she touched the kibble at all. So maybe that's a good amount? I'll check things again after work, it's hard to see by phonelight! I should've tried to get back to the good pet store for some more frozen raw to try this weekend, will have to see if I can get over there before the end of the week (probably not, I'm lazy!).


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## Lilysmommy

Well, I'm really freaking mad at UPS because they didn't leave my insect order outside my door last night, they just left a note saying they'd tried to deliver it & would try again on the next weekday. I didn't need to sign for it, there was no reason for them not to leave it. I tried calling two different locations and the customer service line and the basic outcome was "We can't do ****". I am NOT happy. Pretty much unless they try to deliver it today, I won't get it until Monday. Which means I paid about $25 for 2-day shipping and I'm not getting it for 5 days, and my crickets will almost definitely all be dead.  I plan on filing a claim with UPS on Monday after I get the package. I also contacted Rainbow Mealworms to tell them what happened. May not be the best idea to ship the package so that it'll arrive on Friday if something like this is going to happen - the crickets would have been fine if they actually got to me yesterday. UGH.

In happier news, Bindi continues to be a weird little hedgehog and ate carrot the night before last. I asked Jackie if she actually gave me a rabbit. :lol: I think I'm actually going to slow down on introductions for a couple days though. Her poop dries out before I can get to it, but it has the look of slight-upset-system poop - that super smooth look, not sure how else to describe it. So we'll do a few days of the same Wellness flavors along with the probiotics and see if it goes back to looking normal. I wish it didn't dry out so fast from the CHEs, I can't see what color it is.

In other animal news, Charis is definitely about to shed. I got her out on Wednesday briefly because I hadn't seen her in a couple days & was a bit worried. Her eyes were VERY blue & she was pretty nervous since she couldn't see. I didn't even keep her out a full minute before I let her go back to safety. I took her out again yesterday to see how she was doing & her eyes are a little clearer. We said hi for a minute since she was less nervous, then let her go back in. Hoping she'll shed over the weekend! I'm anxious to see how it goes for her and hope she sheds all in one piece & doesn't have any issues with the left eye - she's consistently had issues with it before, but I think it's because previous owner was an idiot & wasn't careful enough with her humidity, which damaged the eye at some point, so now she continues to have issues with it. The vet commented that it looked like she had previous damage to that eye. 

With the crabs, still only Pippin & Shelob up. I got lucky & saw Shelob out a couple days ago and got a picture of my big girl. She's gorgeous! Her colors are really deep, I love it.



Roomie & I made eggs the other day & I put all of the albumin from the leftover shells into one & put it in the tank. Pippin decided to be a little jerk, spilled all of the albumin out and just started eating the eggshell. :roll: Pippin, there was another eggshell on the other side of the log for that!



And then I came home yesterday and found Pippin like this. :lol:



I'm still not sure if they were actually stuck & pretending not to be or if they just froze because I came in. Such an awkward position though! Little dork.


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## FinnickHog

That sucks. Poor little crickets. Hopefully they manage. UPS should pay the charges if they die. I hate important packages that show up on Friday. It never goes well.

Someone needs to tell Bindi that hedgehogs don't really like veggies. I figured the broccoli was an accident but I guess not :lol:

Shedding time is so stressful! I hope it goes well and you get one nice long piece. If not don't panic! My ball python has only ever had two complete sheds. He either rips his belly skin off first and then the top comes off a day later, or he leaves his tail tip on and I have to peel it for him. If it's bad just give her a soak in some warm water and pop her back in her cage. 

Shelob is so big! I love her shell. Pippin is like "uh oh, don't move! They can't see you if you don't move!"

I have a video of one of my crabs thanking you for the shells, but I haven't uploaded it yet. I'm going to turn it into a .gif and post it hopefully Monday. He seems to have finally picked one.


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, I'm definitely filing a claim tomorrow. How mad I am depends on how many crickets/insects are dead. Even if they're fine, I'm still not okay with having paid so much only to end up with basically 5-day shipping anyway.

And that's what I thought too. :lol: She's such a weirdo! Makes me happy though, I want to try making Chop for her & see if she's interested! If she likes it, that'll be the veggie component of her diet for sure. Her poops from last night look much more normal, so if the green pepper is still good, I think we'll try a bit of that tonight. If it isn't, then we'll go with the canned grasshoppers. I've been including probiotics on her food every night anyway, both to help with the food introductions, and just because I figured why not. Doesn't seem like something that can be overdosed, and I have a massive jar of it that was ordered from the wildlife rehab supply site. 

Yeah, I've been reading shedding guides & information posts like crazy for over a week now. :lol: Yesterday my concern was whether her behavior (staying in her hide for pretty much the last 4-5 days straight) was normal. Found a post that went over the whole process again & also mentioned that yes, that behavior is normal. Makes sense, since they can't see when their eyes go blue! But I'm a nervous mama, as usual. :lol: Her eyes are definitely clearer & she ventured out of the hide briefly last night, so I'm hoping we'll have a shed within the next couple days.

Yay, I'm glad he found something he likes!  It's so funny to watch them go shell-crazy when they get tons of choices. I can't wait to see the gif!


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## Lilysmommy

Well, I filed a claim with UPS. There are a couple of crickets still moving, but almost all of them are dead. Luckily the rest of the insects are still alive & well. The mealworms are in their drawers & have some carrots, which they're already congregating around. I put the dubia roaches in a small cricket keeper & gave them some carrots & broccoli too. It took them about half a second to find the veggies and start munching, which I thought was cute. :lol: I'm glad they made it! Not that they get to live long anyway, but...at least they get a nice last meal? Sorry buggies.

Miss Potato got grasshoppers last night & ate all three, along with her snails & Wellness. She cleans her bowl every night, I love it. And she's thrilled to have mealworms again - she got 5 or 6 when I woke her up for cuddles & vacuumed them down.  I'll probably give her a couple more before I put her away for the night. Tonight's food is going to include broccoli and more grasshoppers. Maybe some carrot scrapings with the broccoli...haven't decided yet.

So...I think I have a new bedding to try! It's something we use at work, but not often (which is why I haven't encountered it before today). It's called Diamond Dry and it's paper-based, like Carefresh. But it doesn't seem to be nearly as dusty or drying as Carefresh is, at least from my initial impression. It basically consists of tiny white squares, about the size of peas. It doesn't seem to be nearly as easy to get a hold of though, unfortunately. And while I haven't found a price yet, there was a couple of forum posts saying it was pricey (but so is Carefresh). Unless it's twice the cost of Carefresh or something, I think I'm going to give it a try. It looks like it'd be great for burrowing in, having the white/light color means it'd still be easy to see strange colored pee/poop, and it doesn't look like it'd have the drawbacks of Carefresh.

So far the two sites I've found to order it from - http://www.thecraftyrat.com/ and http://www.reptilebasics.com/diamond-soft First has their store closed until Feb 1st and the second is out of stock, so I'm going to bookmark & keep an eye on them for now. I'll update if/when I'm able to order some to try out!


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## Lilysmommy

Didn't realize it's been a bit since the last update.

*Bindi*

She's back on antibiotics until next Thursday. Still not quite sure how she's getting these sniffles...I got a desk & raised her cage up on it. My room stays 75-76, and her cage stays more around 78-81. But she sleeps under her liner, so Jackie suggested maybe it was too cool on the floor for her. I was hoping the raised cage would help fix it, but I went to get her out tonight & while she wasn't cool, she didn't feel as toasty warm as I'd like. I'm going to keep track of whether it happens again over the next week until she's off antibiotics. If she keeps having an issue, we'll go back to the vet & see what the vet wants to do next. When we were in last week, she said that if Bindi kept having URI issues, she wants to do bloodwork. Her reason was that there could be another issue (such as uterine problems) affecting her immune system & presenting as URIs. So...we'll see. Here's a picture of the new set up with the desk:



I love it! Plenty of room to keep things in the drawers & underneath, and room in front of the cage to store things like medicine & her probiotics. I did just realize that my plan to stack the upgraded enclosures may not work as planned though...the desk is already a couple feet tall, at least, and each enclosure is going to be 3 feet tall. I'm only just under 5 feet tall...I'm going to need a ladder. :lol:

Also I went back in to get the picture of the set up right after I settled Bindi for the night & had the lights off. Hoped that maybe I'd be fast enough she wouldn't have come out yet...yeah, no luck. She was just all the way out of her cuddle bag & froze up completely. Bindi, I'm not a t-rex, I can see you even if you don't move. :lol: Dork!



*Charis*

She ate again on Monday & struck in less than 15 seconds. I'm feeding her every 7-10 days right now, to try & boost her weight just a bit & because the rats I have are only about as thick as she is at her thickest point, rather than 1.5 times the width. I'm hoping to try some different feeders for her once I start ordering meat grinds for Bindi. I checked the weight of her rats & then checked Hare Today. I think our options for appropriately sized prey are quail, rabbit, and guinea pig. So that should be interesting, to see if she'll try them! Hopefully it won't make her picky or go off her food.

Here are a couple cute pictures of her from a handling session at the end of last week. 





I will always love the "If I can't see you, you can't see me" trick.



*Crabby Crew*

Everyone's burrowed. *sigh* Shelob is the only one up & she stays in the moss pit most of the time. So the tank is pretty boring right now. Hoping everyone comes up safely. I've found tiny pieces of exo twice now, so it's making me really nervous. Hoping that someone was digging for fun & just happened to bring up some forgotten bits that didn't get eaten...but I'll find out eventually, I guess.

Also I learned why you keep cords out of the crabs' way. The humidity on their therm/hygrometer kept shooting between 99% & 20-something %, so I knew it was broken. Didn't take a close enough look at it. And well...



Little monsters. :roll: Don't buy expensive things for hermit crabs, they'll just destroy it & make you cry!


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## FinnickHog

Poor little Bindi! Would it be possible to put a bit of low wattage heat tape or heat cable under the cage just to bring the floor temperature up a bit? I used the cable to heat one wall of Sherlock's cage back when he was up against a cold wall of my parents' house and it was perfect. 

I hope she's all better soon and it's not something that requires bloodwork. I love the frozen hog picture! That's such a silly instinctual behavior.

Charis is looking great! I'm glad she's eating for you. Akihiko is still only eating live >.<. You may not want to try quail. I have no personal experience with it, but a guy I follow closely on YouTube and trust 100%, viperkeeper, only feeds quail to his most stubborn eaters, because he's found that feeding quail to anyone else puts them off mice and rats almost permanently. (Warning if you look him up, he's very southern-hick and has a lot of really strange opinions, but he's amazing with his animals, and has been working with venomous snakes since he was a kid.) And with an entire house full of snakes (I'd say between 400-600 right now?) buying more quails can get expensive fast. But, that being said, the quails seem to usually have more nutritional value, so a permanent switch to those may not be a bad thing.


Darn crabbies! Did they do that with their mouths? I had no idea they could be that destructive. I had a friend place his chinchilla cage up against his computer cables and the result looked like that, but that was a big rodent, not some teeny crabs!

There are some on my local Kijiji site right now. The current owner is keeping them on wood shavings. I want to rescue them so badly but I have nowhere to put them right now . I hope yours all resurface soon. Moving must have been really hard on them.


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## Lilysmommy

I might consider the heated floor thing. I'm also thinking about getting some insulation foam to put under the cage, I already have some to use for Charis's tank (just need to get time & my roomie's help to get it set up - but at least she's staying warm enough anyway).

I don't think I'd mind too much if she insisted on quail only. Looking at prices, it's looking about the same as what I pay for rats, though that's not including shipping. But hopefully she won't get picky...I'd love to have her on a few different proteins. I hate the idea of feeding an animal just one thing for their whole life!

Pinchers! They pinched it all up, not sure if it was for fun or because they were using it to get up & down from the moss pit. And yeah, you wouldn't believe how strong their pinchers are - one of the mods on my crab forum recently posted something about how her jumbo crabs can even snap a pencil in half. They have a LOT of pressure in those things!

Poor crabbies.  That's something I"ve seen in a couple other places recently...I know one of the crappy big pet stores sells freaking cypress bedding in their hermit crab kit. So people think it's necessary and don't know better. UGH.


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## Lilysmommy

I have two pieces of good news!!

First...I was officially offered a permanent position at my job.  Previously, I had a temporary position that was due to end at the end of March, so I was starting to get nervous about having to find something new & about money. This is a HUGE relief. I like my job, my bosses are really nice, it pays well, and has great benefits. It's not something I want to do forever, but it'll be great for several years while I work on paying my dad back for college, and it'll allow me to have my animals & do fun things as well.

Second...well, speaking of having animals. I'm going to visit in Michigan in a couple of weeks, just for a couple days. I spoke to Louise, who runs Wildside, and asked about the kitty I fell in love with there, Ebony. As soon as I asked, I got "She's yours!". So Ebony is coming back to Kansas with me when I come home in a couple weeks.  I can't WAIT!!! I've been really wanting a cat of my own for a few years, and my roomie is likewise dying to have a cat around again. I've been spending all evening looking at cat trees & trying to choose what I want. :lol: Ahhhhh, I'm so excited!!!

Edit: Oh yeah, and some other circumstances mean that I'm getting a decent amount of money sometime in the next month or so. So I'm also going to be able to order the new PVC enclosures for Bindi and Charis a lot sooner than I thought.


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## Schlyne

Lilysmommy said:


> *Charis*
> I'm feeding her every 7-10 days right now, to try & boost her weight just a bit & because the rats I have are only about as thick as she is at her thickest point, rather than 1.5 times the width. I'm hoping to try some different feeders for her once I start ordering meat grinds for Bindi. I checked the weight of her rats & then checked Hare Today. I think our options for appropriately sized prey are quail, rabbit, and guinea pig.


Uh, where did you get the 1.5 times rule? I've never heard of this. It's always been the thickest point. Guinea pigs and rabbits are way too big for balls. Large rats should be as big as you need to go.


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## Lilysmommy

It's been mentioned by several knowledgeable reptile/snake owners on Tumblr that I trust (including a couple that own BPs). I've read both, the width of the thickest point & up to 1.5 times that width. I'm pretty much aiming for somewhere in that range for prey size, as I figure at least as big as the thickest point will provide a decent-sized meal, and a bit bigger will just be a bigger meal & I might wait a couple extra days before feeding the next time. 

I'm not getting full grown of either animals, I know that would be too big. The rabbits would be fuzzies/extra smalls and the guinea pigs would be extra smalls, out of the size categories listed on Hare Today.


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## FinnickHog

Yay, excellent news all around! I expect loads of kitty pictures! And I really want to see the new enclosures when you get them, too. They're so cool.

I feed Illidan rats that are between 1.3-1.5x his maximum girth, but I only feed him every 10-14 days depending on the size of the prey item. Since he's touchy about food I find waiting until he's a bit hungrier to feed him helps keep him from going off his prey. I wait until he's out asking me for food, and then I thaw him something. Sherlock gets two fuzzies that are the same as his maximum girth every 7 days, and Akihiko gets whatever I can find, which is upsetting, but when you want to only eat live and you're in the middle of nowhere, that's what you get. His food has ranged from 1.5x his girth to 2x. He gets them down no problem but it makes me really uncomfortable when he gets a great big one. I feed him every 14 days because his species is prone to obesity. So in my experience, bigger prey is fine as long as you account for the extra calories, which I know you will.


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## Lilysmommy

Oh trust me, I'm going to go nuts with kitty pictures.  I'm unbelievably excited to bring her home...I've seriously wanted this cat for at least 2 years seriously, and joked about wanting her for even longer. She's been at Wildside longer than I volunteered there, which was 6 years. She deserves to finally have a forever home. 

I have no clue how long it'll take to get the enclosures once I order them, I've seen a couple comments about it taking a couple months, but I suppose it'll depend. Bindi's might take longer as I want to ask them about a couple of custom modifications, so we'll see.

That's good to know! I was worried at the first feeding that maybe she could choke on her prey & I wouldn't know how to help her, but I think I'm past that worry now. :lol: She seems to start looking for food after about a week or so, but I think that's probably due to the smaller rats right now. I'm planning to go out to the good pet store on Sunday, which is where I get her rats, so I'll have to try & get slightly bigger ones if I can. I've been conservative in my estimates of what size to get so far because I was nervous about getting something WAY too big. 

Aki really needs to stop giving you a hard time!! Silly boy. Glad he's not had any trouble with them though. And yeah, I'll be watching her weight closely - the vet said another 100-200g wouldn't hurt, but we'll try to stick around where we're at then. I want to be sure she doesn't get obese, especially since she won't be breeding, so there isn't even that reason for it.


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## Schlyne

I would ballpark a couple months. It's been several years since I was really active in the herp world, but that seems to be the usual lead time on cages.


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## Lilysmommy

Bindi really is the perfect hedgie ambassador. My roomie had four friends over today. They met Charis first, who did pretty good (but she's hungry, so she was a little more restless than usual). Then I got Bindi out, and she did SO good. Everyone got to hold her, and she was minimally huffy. She even cuddled up with two of them, including her typical potato pose for one person (who LOVED it, lol)! Everyone was very charmed & thought she was adorable.  I love my sweet baby.


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## Lilysmommy

So I'd previously settled on feeding the new kitty a canned food diet due to the small amount of freezer space we have, which keeps me from ordering raw online in large amounts. Tonight, a week away from picking her up, I've suddenly decided I want to try doing a frankenprey diet, and do the shopping/prepping week by week or every other week! So this will be an adventure. :lol: At least I already have the basic info down, and experience with prepping. I figure I can use commercial raw as my fallback if I'm having a bad couple days & can't get out shopping or handle prepping or whatever.

So tonight I have a sleepy hedgie cuddling on my shoulder and I've started a pricing spreadsheet with one of the local grocery stores' prices. I'm gonna have to do some price-checking trips in the next few weeks though, as the other main store we use doesn't have prices online & I'll need to check out some different ethnic stores to find organs.

Charis finally got her rat & is very happy about this. She made me jump pretty good with this one. I saw her lunge, but didn't feel the rat leave the tongs, so the next thing I noticed was her wrapped around it. :lol: She's so fast!!

Bindi's laundry finally got done today and I think she's going to try peas tonight with her dinner. And hopefully cauliflower sometime in the next couple days as well. When I get back from Michigan and I'm doing price checking trips for the cat's food, I'm going to try picking up a few more veggies to try with Bindi so I can keep moving along on her diet plans as well.


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## Lilysmommy

Bindi ate the peas up.  Making cauliflower for dinner tonight, so she's gonna try some of that tonight. We tried a new foraging toy and I can tell she tried to go for the grasshopper that I put in it, but it looks like she knocked it completely into the cavity, then gave up. :lol: Gonna have to work her into it! I'll try to get a picture of the toy tonight to show you guys, I really like it. 

I finally got on the pet insurance train! Called today & got Bindi and Charis signed up. They'll cost about $26/month together, not bad at all. I'm planning on getting Ebony covered with the full coverage plan once she's home as well (I want to double check her age & such first). So far it looks like that will cost around $60/month. But the plan covers basically everything, 90% of the money back. I have a $3000 vet fund and Care Credit for up front costs, so having all fronts covered will be really reassuring. I was really lucky when I had Lily as my parents were willing to pay for her vet visits when they were too expensive for me to afford, and I could pay them back later. I've always dreaded what would happen if I ran into that kind of issue after moving out, and I don't plan to give it a chance to happen! The vet fund might be slightly overkill, but I figure I'd rather have a good cushion in case more than one of the animals decides to have a health problem at the same time. I plan on adding more to the fund if/when we add any more animals. My roomie still REALLY wants rats, so that may be the next addition...we'll see! I'm still considering a betta fish and/or a gecko of some kind. The permanent full time job is great, but also a bad influence towards adding to my zoo. :lol:


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## FinnickHog

I actually picked up a pet insurance pamphlet today while I was at the vet. I'd rather be insured and have nothing happen than not be insured and have everyone get sick at once. And they always do get sick at once. It's like they know.

I'm so excited for you to get your kitty! Rats would be awesome too! I can't have one here in Alberta. They're all illegal here because we're wild rat free . What kind of gecko were you thinking?


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## Lilysmommy

Completely agreed! I added up the yearly amount for Ebony and went "ehhhh" at it a bit, then reminded myself how quickly that amount can be racked up when health issues start up. When I still had the dog, we were considering an oral surgery + tooth cleaning for her and the estimated total was around $700. And we all know how quickly hedgehogs can rack up vet bills.

Awwww, that sucks!  It seems so weird to have rats be illegal, they're practically everywhere you look here, though that's sadly as feeders a lot of the time. I'm not sure where we would get them yet. Pet store is a definite no. I may look around to see if there are any rat rescues in the area, but I'm not sure. I think Soyala may have found one when she got the ratties she has now, but I can't recall how far away it was. Still, the choice will probably be between going through the rescue or seeing who we find on Craigslist. 

Right now I'm going back & forth between crested geckos and leopard geckos. I think leos are winning though...and I get starry-eyed every time I see pictures of Leach's giant geckos. :lol: I don't know that I could find them around here though, especially as a rescue/rehome. The other two are so much more common, it should be pretty easy to find someone needing a new forever home. Honestly, I may very well end up with both...especially since cresties have pretty simple care as far as reptiles go.

...It's a good thing my roommate is around to keep me from going too crazy. :lol: I want a beardie REALLY badly too, but I know that one will have to wait until we have more space. Same with a dog, and birds will have to wait until we have a stove/oven that isn't gas.


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## FinnickHog

Cresties and leos are both awesome! I miss my leopard gecko all the time, but he's so old I didn't want to risk moving him, and he's just a normal one. Oh the colors you can find these days! Leachies are so amazing, but yeah, it seems like when people buy them they know what they're doing and don't rehome them all that often. Which is good, unless you happen to want a rescue :lol:. There are tons of leos and cresties around though that could use a forever home! The only problem with all the new colors is that people are producing more and oversaturating the market. Which means more getting displaced and being sold to people who don't plan on keeping them. As much as I would love to breed reptiles on a large scale, I never will because you just can't know where all of your babies will end up. And that scares me.

Beardies are great too, and awesome as a starter reptile, but they do get a lot bigger than leopard geckos and crested geckos. I want a pair of green tree monitors and they practically need a walk-in closet's worth of space. *sigh* Maybe one day.

My budgies used to live in the kitchen with my gas stove teflon pans. Looking back, we had absolutely no idea how risky that was. They did really well there, luckily, but I would never do it again. We didn't even know it was a problem back then. Birdies are so sensitive!


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, I'm totally fine with sticking with cresties & leos. And honestly, I think I'm weird because I love the normal patterns for both ball pythons and leos, even with all of the fancy morphs out there. I think it's partly because they really are pretty, and partly because I tend to have a soft spot for the ones that get ignored or pushed aside. With all of the fancy morphs being more desired, the wild-types get ignored so much.  Especially with ball pythons...I know what you mean about breeding, I would feel the same way. I know a few of the people I follow on Tumblr that are getting into breeding worry about that as well. At least one has mentioned that they'd rather euthanize & sell any normal BP babies they get as feeders because they'd rather they get a quick, humane death than end up with someone who doesn't have a clue what they're doing & neglects them.

Yeah, I used to want an iguana...then I started realizing the space they would need, and how temperamental they can be and changed my mind. :lol: I'd love to feed one, but otherwise no thanks...Can I just get a job as a professional animal chef? A beardie is a good option though - still gets lots of greens & needs a nice balanced diet that I can have fun preparing, but doesn't get quite so dinosaur-sized!

Yeah, my family's budgies lived in our kitchen too. I'm not sure if we had teflon pans at the time or not though. There was a lot we didn't know either...it still makes me shudder if I think about it too much.  I want budgies if/when I do get birds and I'm determined to give them everything I can to try & make up for the neglect our family budgies dealt with. I'm still pondering larger bird species. I haven't found a species that has given me the "light bulb on" kind of click where I think everything would work well. I think African Greys are just amazing, but I don't think I would have the time or ability to provide the proper attention & enrichment. I really like lorikeets too, but haven't done much research on them other than knowing they need a specialized diet.


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## FinnickHog

Normal leos are stunning. Mine has a vivid purple tail with white banding. Who knows why. And the babies have that green stripe between their eyes and it's super cute!

When I went in to get my leopard gecko, I actually had my parents convinced into an iguana. Lucky for us, we got an employee who had iguana experience. It's actually quite the story so I'm going to go ahead and tell it. Feel free to skip ahead :lol:.

In Calgary for a few weeks in the summer there's a carnival/rodeo/livestock show called the Stampede. There are rides and vendors and games and cows and sheep and goats and fireworks and drunk people, and it's pretty awesome. Back in 1996 my parents and I went to the Stampede and we were looking at the games, and one booth had a tank of baby green iguanas as prizes. It was the game where you throw darts at stars on a board and if you get however many darts in a star you win. My dad plays darts competitively so he figured he could win me an iguana. There had to have been 15 or so lizards in a little ten gallon glass aquarium. No lid, no stable heat source, no food or water. Just lizards in a cage, under a crappy canopy, in the middle of summer. We spent an hour trying to win one, because we figured they must be easy to care for if they're just sitting there like that. Couldn't win, I'm guessing because the darts were weighted but who knows. Either way, we went home empty handed and we were all kind of sad about it. The following day the booth was shut down for animal abuse (which happens quickly when the event is half animal lovers and breeders), but we didn't find out until later.

The following day we found out that Pisces Pets had baby iguanas for $5 a piece (yeah, those were the days! Try $500 a piece now.) and decided to go and get one. We went in, and the store was huge (this was my first trip to Pisces. Once I grew up I shopped there at least weekly before I moved out of the city) and they had monkeys and a waterfall and a koi pond that had to be 1000 gallons and it was crazy. It took us 15 minutes just to find the reptile section. And when we did, the iguanas were front and center. We asked the first person we saw for help, and he crushed my hopes and dreams completely :lol:. He hiked up his pant leg to show a new footlong gash in his calf, put there through his jeans by his teenaged green iguana. He told us about heating, lighting, UVA and B, feeding and supplements, aggression, personality shifts with age, and that was the end of that. I was 9 years old, so there was no way that would have been safe. He then suggested a corn snake, or a blue tongued skink (yep. Completely his fault), and my parents weren't sure. My mom is anti-snake, and I have to admit that skinks look pretty weird, especially to a family with no reptile experience. Bearded dragons weren't really a thing yet, but they had just hatched out their first clutch of captive born baby leopard geckos. (Wow, right!?) So I took Mister Bumpy home that day instead of an iguana, and it was a good thing. That trip also fueled my love of reptiles, because he let me play with pretty much everything while my parents decided. Bumpy is an old fart now, but he's still awesome. He's very calm and gentle, he eats well, his husbandry is pretty straightforward, and he has a permanent grin. He's pretty sweet.

So, long story short, I have no iguana experience, but I like leopard geckos quite a bit. :grin:

Loris are gorgeous, but they are a lot of work. They eat nectar kind of like hummingbirds, but man are they pretty! I would love one, but Pepper is a one-parrot kind of girl. Honestly, it seems like Senegals, ****atiels and quakers are good starter parrots, and anything smaller can be pretty bad, besides budgies of course. This conure boom right now is ending up with a lot of unhappy owners, which is too bad because they're great birds, but they're kind of "tough guys". And parrotlets hold on with their beaks and don't let go. I can't help but wonder if starting with an African grey would be the way to go. I've heard solo lovebirds can be pretty great too as long as you give them lots of attention, but I have no actual experience.


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## twobytwopets

I've had birds all though my house. In the summer time it seems if I'm in the house, I am in the kitchen. So the first year I canned vegetables we moved a conure into the kitchen.... We were worried the preacher would visit and the bird would show off the new words I taught him. 

Parrotlets are devil birds. Greys can be demanding and can have similar issues to ****atoos, get spoilt as babies but then they grow up. I love my conures... But only one family of them. Quakers are always fun, but they have a bit of an attitude.


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## Lilysmommy

Ughhh. I typed up a reply with a story about a pet store leopard gecko, and then my laptop did something & it disappeared. So maybe I'll tell that some other day because dinner's ready, so I don't to do it again now. :lol: 

I'm slightly horrified by the thought of $5 iguanas!! And the prize thing at the show.  But I'm glad the store at least had an employee that could inform people what they'd be getting into. Definitely not a pet for a 9 year old! The store sounds really cool though, and how much it boosted your reptile love. 

Yeah, I think their diet is fascinating, which I admit is part of my interest. :lol: I'll have to do more research someday & find out more about personality, intelligence, & other needs. Quakers are adorable little fluffs too. I had one for two weeks after she was brought to Wildside by a family that found her outside. We couldn't safely keep her at the rehab, especially because she was flighted, so she stayed at my house. I was pretty charmed by her, but didn't have the time to keep up with her, so it was somewhat of a relief when I took her to a parrot rescue since we couldn't find her owner. Conures are definitely not for everyone. And yeah, I know parrotlets are gaining a lot of popularity. I follow a fantastic blog on tumblr, she has two of them & the amount of time & attention she gives them is just amazing! I may do more research into African Greys too...we'll see. Definitely not getting a bird any time soon, so I have plenty of time to read and think about it, and see where my life goes.


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## octopushedge

Aah, you guys make me so interested in getting a reptile! Unfortunately I don't have the space or budget for one, but they seem like pretty great low maintenance pets.


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## Artemis-Ichiro

I never post on this post but I love reading all the adventures and stories you guys have and the dedication to your pets! I love my hedgie but I could not have another pet, with my 7 year old daughter is more than enough!


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## Lilysmommy

Somehow I missed your post when I posted before, Two! What family of conures do you like/have? And I definitely experienced the Quaker attitude. :lol: Though I gave her the benefit of the doubt with all of the upheaval she had going on! She was still a great little bird for the two weeks I got to spend with her. And I know the Tumblr blogger I mentioned has discussed parrotlet personalities and attitudes before. Hers both seem quite sweet, but I know they still have their moments even though they're well trained & socialized. And she's spent a LOT of time/work getting them to this stage!

And reptiles really are great if you don't have a lot of time for handling. Well, most reptiles anyway! I love having Charis because she's super easy going about handling when we do get her out. But she also isn't fussed at all if we're too tired or don't have time to get her out for a night or two. And heck, then there are reptiles that it's not really advised to try & handle them due to the stress or possible danger to the animal.

And I bet it is, Artemis! Glad I don't have kids yet...I can handle the animals, but not kids as much. :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

Oh!! So I meant to add a couple updates.

Ebony: I stopped by a couple stores for more meat price comparisons today. One of them was a specialty meat store/butcher. And they have ORGANS!! I was ridiculously excited about this. :lol: Way more variety than I expected too! Lamb liver, kidney, and heart; pork heart, liver, kidney, testicles, and brains; Beef heart, kidney, liver, and spleen; and turkey giblets. I'm thrilled - it's one less thing I have to worry about ordering online, which means I can use that for ordering whole prey and special proteins.  I can only order organs through Hare Today in 2lb amounts, which would last her 4 months. Local source means I can buy smaller amounts & give more variety without having organs take up half of the freezer space. Yaaaaay!

Bindi: I got some more veggies & stuff for her to try today. Kale, bell peppers (green & red), and I think we're going to try banana and apple as well at some point. I need to update her "Bindi approved" food list...my memory is awful and I can't remember what we've tried & liked otherwise. I know peas & cauliflower were both recent successes. We also have earthworms to try still...which may be tonight so I know whether to freeze the rest of the worms or let them go outside. Oh, and she figured out the new foraging toy last night! I left the grasshopper hanging out further so she could grab it. :lol: We'll have to keep working on it & make it harder gradually. I'll try to get a picture tonight. I still want to make a Foraging/Enrichment sticky at some point as I make/get/try more things for Bindi.


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## twobytwopets

I love me some pyrrhura conures. They aren't brightly colored, or have the loudness of the other groups. This includes, green cheeked, black capped, and Crimson belly conures.

I have had other types as well from other genus. These are by far my favorite, small to medium bird.


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## Lilysmommy

Ohhhhh green checked conures!! I've seen them before and they're just so cute. I feel like they're mentioned in one of my bird magazine articles too...I'll have to look through them again sometime.


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## FinnickHog

Pyrrhuras are my favorite conures as well. My not-so-healthy first little man was a Pyrrhura rhodocephala. He learned two words and I was so proud of him for it :lol:. He used to sleep in my bed under the sheets while I did my homework, and poop on my Old English translations. I was considering a green cheek or pineapple for my next bird, but then I found Pepper's breeder and was sold. There were lots of good conure breeders near me but no sennie breeders so I had to ship her.


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## twobytwopets

Another one to look into a maxamillian poinus. They don't have the attitude, usually, and fairly quiet.


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## FinnickHog

I wanted a pionus so badly but I couldn't find a breeder. They are absolutely awesome.


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## Lilysmommy

Huh, interesting! I don't think I've seen them before. I'll have to start a list to research. Thank you guys for the suggestions! I'll probably talk to both of you once I can start seriously searching more for a feathery baby to bring home. My biggest thing is I want a rescue/rehome, so that will likely be a limitation as well, and rule out the rarer species. I know I've found at least one parrot rescue in the area, though I don't recall how far. I've kept myself from looking it back up so I don't get too tempted right now. :lol:


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## FinnickHog

I can totally understand that. I was just browsing for reptiles at the Humane Society when I found Oz :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

She's home, she's home, Ebony's home!!!  We had an 11 hour car ride today and neither of us were happy about it. She meowed quite a bit for the first 30-60 minutes, then settled down and switched to occasional meowing. For about 3/4 of the trip, she stuck to being quiet other than when we had gas & bathroom breaks. I tried to keep those to a minimum because I couldn't let her out & felt horrible about it!!

I was kind of wondering how she would do with settling in at the apartment as she's lived at Wildside since she was 6 months old & she's around 8 years now. I expected a week or so to really feel comfortable...nope! :lol: She was freaked out for the first two minutes, tail all fluffed up, and going "Where the heck am I??" And then it was like she suddenly realized "Hey...this place is MINE!" After that, she was checking everything out!  She staked out a perching spot on the chair, checked out the crab tank, explored all of the nooks & crannys (including the fireplace...we'll have to be careful of that if we ever have a fire!), then came back to the chair and climbed into my lap, where she lay purring for 20 minutes. Happy baby!! <3 She definitely knows this is her place now, and that these laps are her laps to sit in. As I type this at our dining room table, she's in my lap again, still purring. My foot is falling asleep, but oh well. :lol: She also checked out the tall cat tree & approved of that. I left her laying on the top shelf, thinking she'd be fine...nope, she followed me as soon as I walked away! After that she discovered the cardboard scratcher in my roomie's room & approved of that. I've showed her her food & water dish and her litter box, but she hasn't been too interested in any of them yet. She's mostly sticking close to me!

And now the picture spam...I've been updating Facebook constantly since we got home. :Lol:

One of her new chosen perching spots.



Cuddllllllles!! <3



She was purring like a motor here.



And it's hard to see due to the darkness, but she was holding my hand and kneading it in this picture.



Here's a picture of what the living room looks like with all of the cat stuff. :lol: We still have a 3-foot cat tree coming on Friday to go in the roomie's room too!



Cat tree approval



She's going to love hanging out on it to look out the sliding door!



And already figured out her scratcher & seems to like it. 



Needless to say, I'm just as in love as I was when she was at Wildside, if not more so! Such a sweet cuddly baby.  She's not going to be happy when I go to bed and shut her out of the room though! Hoping she'll go spend some time bonding with the roomie instead of getting too upset.


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## Dumble

shinydistraction said:


> Nail clippers. I swear those things are like scissors. You own 50 of them, but can't find a single one. So what do you do? Go buy more! Which will be lost within a few weeks. Thus the cycle begins again. And then you get a new pair, can't find it, but found the pair you were originally looking for but couldn't find :roll:


This is entirely true. I got mine out last night knowing that today I would try to clip the 2 nails that we couldn't get last week....and now I look this morning...and they are GONE! Where do they go? nobody knows....


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## shetland

Fantastic!


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## Lilysmommy

Man, lots of good things with the animals tonight!

- The first one started off bad, but was resolved tonight. Bindi didn't run on her wheel the past two nights & I was starting to get concerned. I finally took the wheel out tonight and well, I'm an idiot. :roll: I put it back together wrong & the wheel wouldn't turn! Got it fixed & spinning smoothly now, so the Potato can go back to her usual exercise. Glad it was easy to figure out & fix, at least, and she's not sick again!

- Ebony had her first play time!!  I have a long wand toy with a ton of feathers at the end. Since she's hunted birds before, I thought she'd like it. I was right! She was having a bit of a zoomies fit, so I picked the wand up & she immediately attacked it. :lol: I'm so happy she likes it. And it was interesting, she went right through the cat routine thing - play/hunt time, wind down & groom, then grabbed a quick bite to eat.

- Charis got to eat again and was extremely happy about this. Struck in about two seconds. :lol: I'll never not be amused at how un-ball-python-y she is. Such a good eater!

- Crabby news, finally!!! Roomie was scared earlier by weird sounds which turned out to be a crab getting a drink. :lol: Initially thought it was Shelob (which I would've been happy about - I haven't seen any signs of activity from her for the past few days since I got home from trip), but now I don't think so. I have a molter up!!  I'm pretty sure it's Frodo, from the size & vague memory of who was in which shell. I caught him eating at the main food bowl, scared him over to the supplement bowl, which he paused at, then moved further under cover. So happy to have someone up safe & sound. Now to see if the rest come back up too. Fingers crossed!


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## Lilysmommy

Okay, so I'm a terrible crab mom who can't tell them apart. :lol: I surprised the newly risen crab at the leaf/flower dish tonight & was a mean giant & picked them up. Realized it isn't Frodo, it's actually Sam! I forgot she was the one in the fashionable stripey shell. I didn't hold her more than a couple seconds & put her down in the moss pit and got a quick picture. She dug into the moss shortly after I turned away and is still hiding down there with Shelob. Nice to have two of the girls up!! Now I'm just (impatiently) waiting on Frodo, Eowyn, Merry, and Pippin...And I'm losing hope for Merry.  I know they're shy, but they've been down in the ISO tank since we moved in early December. Still not sure if I want to dig or not though...ugh.

Anyway, here's a picture of the pretty Sam.


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## FinnickHog

She's so pretty! I'm glad she's up. And the kitty is so cute! I really don't get why black cats are harder to adopt out. I think they're gorgeous!

How long can it take for the crabs to resurface? Is there a point when you know it's going to be bad?


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## Lilysmommy

I think they are too!! We had three black girls still at Wildside and I still feel bad for leaving the other two. But if I do end up adopting another from there, it still won't be either of them - the other cat left there is a very sweet girl who has major weight/food issues. She was so fat when we first got her that she could barely walk. We got her weight down & she was adopted out twice. Both families failed to keep her on a diet and she came back both times almost as fat as when we got her. So if I get a second kitty...I want it to be her. We really think she'd benefit most from a raw diet (and she'd be easy to switch because everything is food to her :lol.

It can really range, anywhere from 4 weeks to several months. Usually the big crabs are the ones that stay down for several months for molts though...the smaller ones are usually ~2 months, give or take. And Merry has spent a lot of the time since I got them underground, so I'm trying not to worry myself too much...but after Boromir, it's hard. There hasn't even been a sign of movement, the sand is still completely smooth across the surface in the ISO.  Poor shy baby. And I'm still worried about the main crab tank crew because I found a couple of empty leg shells, which makes me think someone's molt was disturbed & they may have been killed/eaten. But I don't dare dig with how many are under & could still be molting. Seriously. These guys are the worst. pet. for anxiety! >_< I could never recommend them to anyone as good pets. I still debate on whether I"ll ever adopt more, especially if I lose more of my current crew. It's not uncommon, due to how much stress they go through before they make it into a good home. I just don't know. On one hand, stress and anxiety and I'm not fantastic with no-touch pets (I want cuddles, dang it). On the other hand, at least I know how to care for them properly & am willing/able to give them what they need. ...So yeah, I'll probably end up taking in more, though I still aim to keep my numbers low enough that they won't end up crowded once everyone is a large and/or jumbo (even if that's years away).


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## FinnickHog

Awww I would take that cat home too. My first cat had been returned for biting an elderly couple the first day they got him home. We took him despite the warning and he was hilarious. He had a thing for floppy pant legs.

Jeez, these crabs are stressful! This makes me glad I don't have any. I don't do well with waiting. Hopefully they're all okay down there.


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## Lilysmommy

About to crash for the night, but super excited & had to share quickly here. Almost all of the hermit crabs are back on the surface in the main tank!!! Had realized yesterday that Sam was up, then confirmed earlier today that both Sam AND Frodo were up, and just took a look in and saw Frodo in the leaf/flower dish, and Shelob on the log. Then realized I had another smaller green shell crab heading for the flower/leaf dish and it's Eowyn!!  Just little Pippin left MIA now, hopefully he comes out soon. I'm so excited that these guys are all okay...and they have good timing for their reappearance, right as I'm starting to actually worry. :lol: I hope they'll get used to the cat though because she's very interested in watching & pawing at the glass. I scared her off tonight with some "pshhht"s and shooed her away, but I don't know that it'll keep her back while I'm sleeping. Hopefully she doesn't scare them too much...

Edit: Oh, and pictures coming tomorrow when I have a chance to get them saved to Photobucket! I took a ton now that I finally can again. :lol:


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## FinnickHog

Yaaaaay I'm so glad they're up. Pippin must not have gotten the time-to-wake-up memo yet.

Hopefully the crabbies don't mind being kitty tv too much.


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## Lilysmommy

Well, we have a bigger concern than just being kitty tv now. When I got up for work this morning, I discovered the cat didn't settle for just batting at the side of the tank - she tried to jump on top. :? The left side lid for the tank was caved in since it doesn't fit tightly, just sits on top. I don't think the crabs could get out around the lid (I hope...), and it looks like the cat didn't bother trying to get in further, as I'm sure the lid collapsing under her scared her pretty good. The lid's not broken either, thankfully. So all's well in the end, but I'm still not happy!! I'm sure the crabs didn't appreciate it either, poor things. Gonna have to figure out a good way to keep the cat back so the crabbies can go about their business in peace.


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## Lilysmommy

Some updates on everyone!

Bindi - Still eating up nearly everything I give her! I just got my new laptop, so after I get it set up, I should be able to finish her diet plans this week and make a batch of Chop for her this weekend. She's doing great otherwise, we had some nice snuggles last night after a couple nights without. I checked her weight a few days ago and the high fat of the Wellness seems to be well countered by the insects - her weight is holding steady around 445g. I'm wondering if I may have to include more high fat insects like waxworms and higher fat meat for her final diet, since it'll be so high in insects. We'll see how it goes. Once I start adjusting things to the ratios I want, I'll be keeping a much closer eye on her weight so I can adjust things as needed.

Charis - She's shedding again! I suspected when I noticed she'd spent a couple days in her hide last week, around mid-week. Went to get her out and didn't even touch her. She had her head out of the hide in defensive position and her eyes were very cloudy. Didn't want to freak her out more than she was, so we let her be. She got a sudden rainstorm in her tank last night and I'm keeping the humidity at 65% and higher, so hopefully this one goes better than last time. Gonna be on edge until she's done though!

Crabs - Everyone is pigging out nightly. I love it.  They've tried some of Bindi's insects and so far, they love it. Maggots, mealworm beetles, and dubias. I think I tried snails, which were ignored. I got them since frozen seafood, which has been a hit too. They're going for some of the fresh/frozen veggies as well, but mostly still shoveling in the protein and calcium after their molts.

Ebony - Still a total cuddle monster. I think she got spoiled having me home all weekend, she wasn't happy I went to work today... Me neither, kiddo. She also wants to be an only child, she was a bit disgruntled when I went to check on everyone else. She'll have to get used to it, she's not likely to ever be an only child. :lol:

I think that's it for now! Will try to post some pictures once the laptop is up and running.


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## Lilysmommy

Charis shed for the second time! Aaaaaand it's at least 98% whole!!!!!  I'm SO thrilled, it's really all in one long piece with no missing parts that I can see!!! The only place that's a little messed up is the head, which makes sense because lots of teeny scales and hard spots. I'm going to get her out a little later to see if it did all come off properly & is just bunched up in the shed, or if she has any last bits stuck (especially eyecaps). Fingers crossed that all is well there too. I'm still so very excited though!! This means I finally have her humidity on point and the spraying I did the past several days to help with shedding must have helped as well, making sure that it was also humid enough in her hide. So much better than last shed!


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## Lilysmommy

Well, I got her out to say hi and confirmed that YES, we have a total shed with no stuck bits at all!!!  I found one eyecap still in the whole shed, and I'm guessing the other got lost in the bedding. But she doesn't have it still on her, which is the important part! I checked all of the other places where shed can sometimes get stuck and she looks absolutely perfect. She's going to happy because that means tonight is dinnertime at last! 

Here's a picture of her shed skin:



And here's my pretty girl back in her tank after we said hi for a few minutes. She's so shiny!!


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## Dumble

Out of curiosity how often does she shed?


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## Lilysmommy

About every 4-8 weeks is what I read from researching, depending on whether the snake is a juvenile or adult. So far the three sheds she's had that I know about were December 4th (day before I brought her home), January 25th, and now March 19th. So hers seem to be roughly 7 weeks apart so far.


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## shetland

I know this sounds stupid, but aren't you afraid of her???


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## Lilysmommy

Nope.  Sometimes she makes me jump if she freaks out a bit when I first go to get her out, but that's surprise. And I remind myself that it's because SHE'S scared. 4 feet long sounds big, but she's really very small, especially compared to large bumbling humans!! And her biggest defense is to flee or bite - her long body is completely exposed and easy to hurt if she were to get stepped on, dropped, etc. So I'm honestly surprised she's not even more defensive - once she realizes it's just me, she calms down very quickly & is happy to explore and check things out. Not to mention, I've been bitten by her once and it was pretty anti-climatic. :lol: Hedgehog bites hurt a LOT worse, trust me!

Also, it's hard to be afraid of a snake that scares herself by booping her nose on things. :lol: At least she's not afraid of her food like a lot of ball pythons are! Really though, out of all of my animals, she's the least likely to hurt me - the crabs pinch much harder, Bindi has bitten me far more times than Charis, and though the cat isn't really aggressive, cat bites & scratches are actually quite dangerous due to how deep punctures can go & the bacteria on their claws & in their mouth.


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## FinnickHog

I saw this a few days ago and wanted to comment so bad but just haven't had time. So here I am now! :lol:

Charis sounds like such a sweet girl! Very typical ball python-esque. I love that they're more likely to hide than bluff or strike. It's such a bizarre trait for a snake, and pretty much the entire species does it. So much so that they got named after it :grin:.

That being said, most snakes won't do anything scary unless you intimidate them or they're hungry. Some snakes are easier to intimidate and some are always hungry, so there are obviously exceptions, but for the most part the common pet noodles are happy to just hang out on a nice warm person. California kingsnakes have a bad reputation for biting, but in the wild they eat rattlesnakes, so biting first and asking questions later is an evoled trait for them. They don't bite because they're mean, just because they don't want to die. On top of that, like Kelsey said, the bites are really not very bad. It's definitely freaky having them lunge and strike and hiss, but if they actually bite after all that I laugh it off. The bluff is the worst part.

That doesn't apply to tree snakes, or the big guys though. Tree snakes have bigger, more developed fangs so they can grab prey out of the air. So that hurts and it's best to avoid the pointy ends on them. And big snakes like reticulated pythons have big mouths, so the bites are nastier just due to scale. And then there's the African rock python, who is just plain nasty. They're the only non-venomous snake I will never handle. Because they're just plain awful animals.

So the scary ones are the venomous snakes for obvious reasons, and the big pythons. Nothing you'll see regularly can hurt you, or even wants to hurt you. They're just scared or hungry. Unlike my parrot who will gnaw my fingers off if I forget to share my banana. Now she's scary! :lol:

If they don't freak you out really badly, ask to stroke one at a pet store. Ball pythons or corn snakes are great to start with. And they feel really cool!


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## Lilysmommy

Completely agreed on the bluffing thing - I jump a bit when Charis thrashes slightly when I go to pick her up, but we both calm quickly & that's the most she does! I'm still trying to figure out a good way to let her know it's me without scaring her or making her think it's possibly food, since she's still so used to live feeding.

And yeah...I'll leave the tree pythons to you. :lol: I'm happy with my sweet, dorky ball python! Your new kingsnake must be absolutely gorgeous though, I looked at the pics of her sibs and they're stunning!! I'm glad she's got such a great temperament and is so easy-going. I can't wait to see pics!


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## twobytwopets

Add me to team 'more nervous about hedgehog bites' club.
Snake bites don't really worry me, and didn't when they should have. Growing up we had the, of you can catch it you can keep it rule...


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## Lilysmommy

Just wanted to post an update on the Pancake! She's continuing to improve daily. She's been back to running on her wheel the past couple of nights, with a little poop & pee each night. Not much yet, but something. She's still not eating on her own, but I did see her drinking last night when I went in to put one of her bowls back down. Last night and tonight, I've included a second food bowl with little bits of Bindi's meals - last night was snails, maggots, and some of the Wellness chunks, all left untouched. Tonight we're trying mealworm pupae, hornworm, and some whole ground rabbit. I doubt she'll touch it, but eh. Worth a try, right?

On the plus side, she's doing both better and worse with syringing. Confusing, right? :lol: She's much more energetic about protesting it, so we have to take more breaks because she starts flailing so much. It's nice to see her so energetic & bright-eyed though! However, we've had a breakthrough on syringed food being a good thing. Whether that's because she's getting her appetite back or I've figured out the magic touch, or both, who knows. She's started lapping a little down easily though, without fighting me the whole way. This morning we did 3 cc and this evening we did 4cc, with very little ending up on her/me/towel. I'm still not sure what to think of amounts - while I'm not aiming to get the amount quoted in the sticky into her (and I'm still wondering if that's really the right goal or if it might be too much or more dependent on individual hedgie, like with normal eating amounts), I'm still not convinced what I'm giving her is quite enough either. I'll be happier if she keeps up eating 4cc or more in a sitting, but we'll see. She's also less excited about drinking the Pedialyte, which I'm hoping means she's almost back to normal hydration. She does still take 2-3cc of it each time though.

I'm excited about having gotten my Hare Today order because I have a couple of new prey items for Charis now - a small guinea pig & some small quail. I have no clue if she'll go for them, but fingers crossed! I think I may try the guinea pig first, since it's closer to rats. She'll be due to eat again this weekend or early next week, I think. I need to check my Facebook posts because I forgot to write it down! I really need to get everyone's care notebooks finished...  

Ebony kitty is going to the vet next week. It's meant to be a first wellness visit, but I'm afraid we'll likely come out with some treatment to do. She's been sneezing a lot still, including some worrying gagging. And she's scratching her ears quite a bit, which is making me think ear mites. I wish I'd made the appointment sooner, ugh! I need to get her started on flea/tick meds anyway, which will probably be Revolution. 

Miss Bindi is being a good girl. She seems to be balancing out Pancake, who's being the "problem child" right now. :lol: Eats all of her food every night, wheels, pees & poops normally, etc. Model hedgie! She let me cut her nails a couple nights ago with almost no protest. I'm lucky that all of my animals really are so easy. Other than Pancake's issues, everyone's been a relief this week because I've been a bit of a mess, but I can still at least get animal care done each night. Hoping the weekend will help reset my brain, even though I have to work this weekend.


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## Lilysmommy

Oh, I completely forgot about the other thing I wanted to mention!! So I think I've mentioned a couple times that I've found a new bedding I want to try. While I don't think I can get the same brand as we use at work (they haven't contacted me back, anyway), the company of a similar bedding has been amazing so far. The bedding is called Alpha-dri and the company is Shepherd Specialty Papers. 

I got a quick reply from a representative, we figured out during the conversation that I'm not in his district, so he passed me along to the rep for my area. That guy gave me his number so I could call as they don't have any distributors near me that could sell 1-2 bags at a time rather than pallets of 20+ bags. I called & talked to him today and he said they could ship me single bags of the bedding I was interested in, but it'd be expensive $30/bag & probably around $20 shipping as well. He's going to get back to me with a definite quote by Monday at the latest. However, he mentioned another product that they sell that he thinks would work well for hedgehogs, it seems more similar to Carefresh. They're sending me a free sample bag and it should be here by next Wednesday at the latest. I'm excited to see if it'll work out well!! I'll keep you guys updated and will of course post pictures & such once I have it. This product is only $11/bag for the same size bag as Alpha-dri, so if it works well, it'd be a lot cheaper to use. Here's hoping it doesn't have the drawbacks of Carefresh...


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## Lilysmommy

Oh my god, I"m sorry for triple posting, but PANCAKE ATE!!! She ate the hornworm and some of the raw rabbit!!!  I'm completely blown away! Gonna go get some more out for her right now!


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## FinnickHog

Whaaaat!? She ate a nasty hornworm of all things!? Good girl pancake! That is excellent news! I'm glad she's recovering quickly.

I'm excited to see what Charis thinks of the variety. I'm so scared to try new things with Illidan in case he never goes back. He prefers mice to rats already, and that's enough of a hassle. I can't even imagine quail!

Aww, poor Ebony. I hope it's just mites and nothing worse. Is she okay with vet checks or does she throw a fit? My cats were always awful about it. My orange tabby would pee on my bed when we got home.

I need pictures of the bedding sample! I was in Bulk Barn (of all places!) a few days ago to buy some trail mix for myself, and they had some compressed paper bedding. I might have to buy a bundle and see what happens, but if it's the same as what you're getting I'll just wait and let you do all the testing :-? :grin:.


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## Dumble

Hurray for Pancake! You must feel very relieved to have seen that Such good news!


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## Lilysmommy

I gave her another hornworm and some more rabbit before bed. She ate the secund hornworm too, and a little more rabbit. Didn't finish it, but still!! And Bindi was a pig and ate all of her food before I even went to bed. :lol: Usually she leaves a little, but not tonight. And I offered Pancake food by syringe this morning, not planning to press her much, but she actually sucked down 3cc pretty quickly! She even did better with the food than the pedialyte. So I think we're definitely doing better. 

I'll definitely let you know what Charis does! She's such an eager eater that I'm hoping this won't make her get picky with me.

I haven't actually taken her to the vet yet before, so I'm not sure how she'll behave. I think she's one of the worse ones from the rehab, but we'll see! This clinic has a gold standard certification from some group that promotes cat-friendly conditions in vet clinics such as getting into a room quickly, home-like rooms with fake plants and comfy furniture, etc., so maybe she'll do okay. Fingers crossed!

I really hope this bedding works out nicely! It'd be nice to have a loose bedding without the drawbacks of our other options, even if my plans for bioactive hedgie cage work out. I won't be able to set that up for something like five or six months anyway.


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## Lilysmommy

Well, we expected a URI, but that's not what we got...

It's been mentioned on here plenty of times that hedgies are prone to getting infections after hibernation attempts due to the lowered immune system. Most of the time, this seems to be a URI. That was part of why we had Pancake on antibiotics this week. Well, they may have helped with stuff that antibiotics are effective against, but we managed to get something else - fungal infection!  Her feet are peeling, and so is her upper lip a little. I thought at first that she was chewing on her front feet due to how it looked. Jackie pointed out that the raw spots were only on the top of her feet and that it looked more like skin peeling off than chew marks. So we're thinking it's a fungal infection...Poor Pancake!! She just can't catch a break right now. I'm calling the vet tomorrow morning to see if I can get her in on Tuesday. Hoping my roomie is willing to let me borrow their car or drive us to the vet because my car is going to the mechanic tomorrow afternoon to be looked at on Tuesday and I'm not sure when I'll get it back...argh! And the cat has a vet appointment on Thursday. Gonna be a fun week!  I'm ready for everyone in the house to be healthy again soon!


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## FinnickHog

Oh no, poor Pancake! Fungal infections are the worst. Hopefully you're able to get her in for Tuesday and it goes well. Keep us updated.


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## Lilysmommy

I actually managed to get Pancake in today! I seriously love both my manager & my vet clinic. This is the second Monday in a row I've had to leave work early for a last-minute vet visit, and my manager has had no problem with it. She even asked me if I'd need help getting work done last week & said to let her know if I did need help. And both Mondays, I called in the morning & my vet was willing & able to work us in that afternoon to be seen. Added to that, by the time I called today (5 minutes after they opened), they'd already had 3 emergency calls and they were fully booked...and still got us in!! I thanked everyone several times while we were there. 

Anyway, so the vet went ahead & got samples to culture to see what's going on with Pancake's feetsies. The culture will take 7-10 days to grow, so until we get the results, I'm going to be giving her nightly footbaths with diluted chlorhexidine, which I already have on hand. I'm also going to start wiping down her cage nightly with it, and possibly spraying her cage blankets lightly & leaving them to dry while she cuddles with me after her foot bath. I don't have enough to change nightly & I don't want to use paper towels because she likes to sleep in her liner/blankets rather than a hedgie bag or anything else. If I have to go to more extreme cleaning measures towards the end of the week or when we get the results back, I will.

Also, I keep picking the weird hedgehogs, I swear. Pancake was SO relaxed at the vet. Let us play with and pull her paws while looking at them, let the vet pull little pieces of the scabs off carefully with tweezers to go in the culture (didn't even flinch...wtf hedgie), and even dozed off while I gave her a belly rub while we waited for the vet to get the culturing supplies. Even the other two friendliest hedgies I know (Bindi & Jackie's Danu) are grumpy balls of death at the vet!!

Oh, and she's been eating her normal kibble again, she ate a little last night...not much, but she doesn't usually eat much. I'm having to try hard not to compare her to Bindi, who's a pig & eats a ton. I still worry she's not getting enough...it's so hard to tell!! I might offer her a little food by syringe tomorrow & see what she does. I just don't want her to start going downhill again, with how quickly she got dehydrated & lethargic before.


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## Soyala_Amaya

I can give you more fleece! How much more do you need? Let me know and I'll have it bagged up for you when you come down Friday. I have TONS, you've seen my hoard, lol!


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## Lilysmommy

Pancake's gonna give me a stroke or something, I swear. She's still not really eating - she's pushing the kibble around the bowl, I'm finding a couple pieces outside her bowl, but I don't think she's actually eating any. I haven't seen poop today or yesterday. I counted out kibbles tonight & also gave her 5 pieces of Wellness wet food. If she doesn't eat tonight, we start syringing again tomorrow. *sigh* We did a chlorhexidine bath tonight & she wasn't impressed. Pulled some scabby skin off, she didn't even react. Feet look okay under the scabs - not sore, red, or anything like that. 

She's getting to try the new loose bedding that arrived today. I kept one of her fleece blankets in, just so she has something that smells like her still. I have pictures and such, but I'll probably wait to upload them this weekend. This week is...not fun. Just trying to get through to Friday right now, then I can start thinking about doing things like uploading pictures and more. Just wanted to update on her and one other thing...

Charis got to eat tonight...and was offered her first guinea pig! It was small & white, so very rat-like. And it was actually rather smaller than her last rat, which was humongous (the pet store considered it a jumbo). That's why it's been 2.5 weeks since she last ate, because that meal was so huge. I wanted to make sure she was hungry before offering new & unusual prey. But I shouldn't have worried. She was out & looking for food when I went in with it & as soon as her snout booped it, she grabbed & coiled. Waiting a while before I go in to see if she actually finished it & make sure she didn't have a "wait a second..." moment. :lol: Should be interesting to see if she goes for the quail just as fast or no! I'll have to see if I can get rabbit in the right size for her too, for next time I order. Even if she doesn't like quail, I'll be very pleased if I can rotate rat, guinea pig, and rabbit for her.


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## FinnickHog

Oh Pancake, you need to eat! What a silly girl. I hope she gets better soon.

That's awesome with Charis though! I'm glad she liked the guinea pig! I know balls are suckers for gerbils but I wasn't sure what she would think of guinea pig.


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, she ate one kibble last night, assuming it didn't just get lost in the bedding. *sigh* Back to syringe-feeding today. At least she was doing well with that right before we quit, so hopefully she'll pick it back up again. The biggest problem now is she's a butt about letting me clean her face properly & gets food stuck in folds under her chin. I found a missed bit last night during her bath & it was a bit red & sore underneath when I got it off.  I'm taking the cat in to the vet today, so I'll be making another appointment for her for early next week while I'm there. Going to see if the vet will check her mouth out thoroughly & see if something's going on there. She just won't eat anything on her own...she was even turning the raw rabbit up last time I gave her some. Won't eat the soupy A/D except when syringed. Doesn't want Wellness or any insects...arghhhh! 

I'm glad too! Wasn't sure what I was gonna do with it if she didn't want it. :lol: Next challenge is the quail! I've heard that as well about gerbils & would totally try to find them for her, but they're so small that she'd need a few for a meal...and I keep being told that it's best to feed only one appropriately sized prey rather than several small ones.


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## FinnickHog

What a little goofball. Hopefully she's still open to syringe feeding for now at least. 4-7 more days until the culture comes back, and then we'll know what's up with her poor foots. It's a good thing you and Jackie got to her when you did. Can you imagine if problems like this started cropping up for her previous owner?

Gerbils seem like such an odd food for ball pythons. They're way too heavy bodied for one gerbil to fill them up, and they seem so slow and methodical I have trouble picturing one being able to catch a gerbil at all. I'm excited for the quails. I bought some for Aki and he says "blech, they're dead." The turd.


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## Soyala_Amaya

Poor Pancake has been the worst food hedgie I've ever had. She regularly ate half a tablespoon or less a night of her kibble for me. I was super excited when she ate the rabbit and hornworm for Kelsey because it was more than I ever got! She is SO sweet, and cuddly, and loving, that it just feels like her food issues are her balancing act for being the worlds most chill hedgehog. 

Really, if you rub her tummy, she'll let you do about anything. It's why we were so concerned with her hibernation attempt though! I kept saying "How the **** do I tell if she's lethargic? What is lethargic for a hedgehog like this?!" 

At this point, I'm almost hoping the vet finds an abcess or something because then we'd have a WHY, not just pulling our hair out.


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## Lilysmommy

I really hope the vet finds something too. Something we can FIX, that is. She's eaten 9cc for me today in two sittings, going to try & do three tomorrow. She's taking 4-5cc a sitting, so I should be able to get at least 15 into her that way. We have a vet appointment for Monday afternoon with Jackie's vet to get a thorough look at her mouth and possibly do x-rays as well.


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## Soyala_Amaya

We gave her a SUPER long soak in a warm bath with chlorhexidine moisturizing shampoo and the crusties on her feet just fell off after a few minutes  She still has some redness and cracking around the nail beds, but her feet look so much better without the gunk! I really, really think it's fungal the way it's acting. 

Also, going to send Kesley home with some of my raw food mixes I made when Qwerty had c. diff and wouldn't eat anything, just drink hedgie soup. Super watery food might help.


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## Lilysmommy

Bindi ate 15cc of A/D from me yesterday, which made me happy! I also gave her more crushed food & she definitely got into that last night. I'm considering adding a bowl tonight of kibble that's been crushed & then had water added to it as well. She still seems to be doing well otherwise, her energy is good, she moves around when I get her out. She still puts up a little fight with the syringing, but not nearly as much now that she knows what's going on. She just has to remind me of my place. :lol: And she HATES having her face and chin wiped off, but she doesn't get a choice on that.

Still need to make a post about the loose bedding I got, but I still really like it. I need to make a little container or something to help protect her food & water bowls from it as it's very light & easy to push into the bowls. Which obviously isn't ideal for water! I don't have a ton in her tote right now so that it doesn't get everywhere. She still has a fleece blanket in there though, and still hides under that to sleep. But she seems to like the bedding too & burrows around in it. Once I have a container made up for Bindi's bowls, I'm going to try switching her to it & see how much of the bag it takes and what she thinks. That may wait until later in the week though. My big plans for today are to finally get Bindi's freaking Chop made, and to harass the hermit crabs with a tank clean & slight rearranging (don't want to freak them out TOO much, but may change up one or two things).


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## Artemis-Ichiro

Did you feed the right hedgie?


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## Lilysmommy

Oh trust me, it's hard to mix these two up, similar personality or no. :lol: Pancake is still a chunk!

I just had her out for feeding and tried to have the food a little thicker consistency, without being watered down as much as I've had it. She wasn't a fan & gave me a lot of fight to even get 1cc into her. So I watered it back down - and she ate 4cc. Now the question is, is that just a matter of preference for her, or could that mean she's having trouble swallowing the thicker food? Think I'm going to mention it to the vet, at least. 

I'm succeeding in making most of the animals hate me today. Pancake's getting force-fed, the cat needs ear drops & that didn't go well at all. Going to have to see if roomie will help me do them from now on, as much as we can. And I'm going to feed myself, then start working on the hermit crab tank clean, which they won't appreciate at all. :lol: Ahhh, pet ownership...


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## Artemis-Ichiro

Isn't Bindi on the raw food diet?


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## Lilysmommy

Oh pffft. Sorry, I didn't even notice I typed the wrong name up there! :lol: Definitely fed Pancake, not Bindi! I don't think I'd have fingers left if I tried to force-feed her, heh.


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## Artemis-Ichiro

That's why I was confused. Lol. I knew Bindi was healthy (finally) and now syringe feeding? I'm glad Bindi is ok and good luck with the rest of the zoo, I wouldn't be able to handle that many animals, my daughter and Ichiro are all I can handle!


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## Lilysmommy

So I had a really good day today, which is wonderful when that coincides with a day off. I got lots of stuff done today!  I only changed the hermit crab food for today, plus sprayed them down as the top sand was getting dry. I'm still hoping to find time sometime soon to pull everything & everyone that's above ground out & clean up the top of the substrate and mix up the top inch or so to make sure it's still the right consistency. It's been a couple months since I have, so it's definitely due. But they should appreciate the fresh food - they got some mealworm castings to try, to see if they like them as much as earthworm castings, and they got some scrambled egg which they went NUTS over last week.

And I was finally able to get Bindi out again tonight as she was long overdue for cuddles and TLC. She doesn't quite agree right now though - she's pretty upset with me for giving her a bath. :lol: Of course, her version of upset is probably considered friendly for some hedgies. She huffs when I try to pet her, but none of the quills raise even slightly. All bluff, no stabby!

Oh, and Ashley - I tried the quail with Charis this week, two different nights. First night just the quail and the second night after warming the quail up with a rat. Both times she inspected it and deemed it Not Food. :roll: So I gave up & tossed it since it'd been warmed up twice & in the fridge for three days by this point. She got a rat on Thursday night instead and was happy to finally have Definitely Food. We'll give quail another try someday. At least we like rat & guinea pig so far! I may try ordering a small rabbit from Hare Today next & see how that goes over.


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## FinnickHog

I'm glad today ended up going so smoothly for both you and Pancake! You just reminded me that I still really need to get my hands on some earthworms for my crew...

That doesn't sound particularly intimidating, Bindi! If you want to be scary you need to at least *try* to be pokey! :lol:

That's too bad Charis didn't like the quail. Though she's probably never tasted bird before so she has no idea at all what it is. One day she'll strike at it by accident and go "oh this is AMAZING!" Aki didn't like his dead quail either, but he doesn't seem to like dead anything. I offered him a f/t hopper mouse from a new batch today with no luck. Snakes :roll:.


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## Lilysmommy

So I'm setting a goal for myself for this week & next, to get into a regular schedule of caring & handling all of the critters. I've been slacking on things the past few weeks with everything going on with Pancake. Everyone else is fine, but they haven't been getting the care & attention they deserve, and I know I need to do better. The cat at least gets cuddles & attention from the roommate, but everyone else is dependent on me for everything. 

I'm going to try drawing up a schedule so I can get into a routine & get used to it. I tend to do better with routine once I've settled into it, so I think that'll work best. I'm thinking I'll have two days (Monday & Thursday?) to get Charis out for 30-60 minutes. That way if one day gets missed due to her having a feeding, something going on in my life, etc., she still gets to come out once during the week. The only thing that might interrupt both days is me being gone (going home for a visit for a week soon) or if she's preparing to shed. I also need to get better at getting into her tank more often so she gets used to it...it just makes both of us jumpy. But we both need to get used to it! Ashley, would you happen to have any suggestions for making that go smoother? Or is it pretty much just do it & she'll start to realize that it's me & it's normal? 

I have permission from the vet to have both of the hedgies out at the same time as Pancake improves, so I may start that this weekend or next week. Tonight I have Bindi out for cuddles alone while I read. It'll be easy to make sure everyone's getting regular cuddles then. I can have the hedgies out 3-4 days of the week & have one or two evenings to myself & for the cat to get some cuddles without getting chased away from the prey animals. At least I don't need to handle the hermit crabs! :lol:


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## FinnickHog

Written schedules help so much! I always find myself missing something or slacking somewhere if I don't have a schedule pinned to the wall or on my phone with an alarm set. Once you find a system that works it gets really easy and eventually it'll all be automatic.

When you reach into Charis's cage, does she recoil, hide, flinch, or pull into a defensive striking position? Depending on how she's behaving you can try different things. With Illy, he's almost always in a hide when I go to get him, so I just gently rub whatever part of him is sticking out so he knows it's just me. He was completely untame when I got him so it took time. Now it makes him pop his head out, but not in a hungry way, more in a slow, curious way, and then I can flip his hide and scoop him. If he's sprawled all over the cage I actually just take the lid off and let him come out on his own time. He's a nosy guy and will plop right onto the floor while I do maintenance on the other cages, and then once he's out I can scoop him easily and make a sneklace. With Sherlock, who recoils into a defensive striking position or stretches right out to nip me, I have to tap him gently with the snake hook before I can reach in. It took me about a month to teach him being booped means no food, while being hooked and moved means food, but he's got it figured out now. Kerrigan used to wince when I opened the lid of her cage, so I just opened and closed it a bunch, and reached in every time to give her a gentle stroke. She still goes defensive with the tail rattling and the showing me her junk, but she doesn't seem genuinely disturbed anymore when I reach for her. She prefers to climb out of her cage on her own too, so I just leave her lid off unless I'm harassing her to check for impaction, which means I gently stroke and then scoop. With Aki it's a bit different. His perches are removable, so I just take the perch he's on out and then splat him in my hand. He feels the warmth and will eventually move onto my arm. If he feels like it. Sometimes he doesn't.

So if she's flinching it's just an initial startle response, so just keep bugging her and she'll get used to it. Don't boop her snoot though, balls really don't like that . If she's recoiling or going into a ball, just treat her like a hedgehog and pick her up anyway. If she's recoiling into an S shape with her head raised, or tongue flicking excessively, that's a threat or a feeding response, so you'll want to tap her with something other than your hand and then pick her up so she doesn't always assume the lid opening means food. But yes, it's basically just repetition and not showing that you're intimidated. If you're nervous, she'll get nervous, and then she'll get defensive. If she's just wincing a bit or balling up, dive right in and scoop her. She'll get used to it soon.

Remember, there's no reason to be nervous! The worst things she can do are bite or go potty on you. You've already been bitten so you know it's not that bad. Honestly, being crapped on is way worse than being bitten. :lol: Just keep pestering her and you'll both get used to it in no time!


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## Lilysmommy

Thanks for the advice!!!  She usually recoils and flinches a bit. How violent the reaction is usually tends to be based on how long since I last had her out, plus obviously she's more startled when it's close to shed. I usually just pick her up anyway & she calms quickly, but the initial startle kind of makes us both a bit jumpy at first. :lol: I usually do touch her first, then take the hide off to actually pick her up. And yeah, I always get a little annoyed at videos & gifs of people booping their ball pythons on the snoot/head. Most of the time the snake jerks back or even balls up! They're already so shy, I don't understand why you would intentionally scare them or think that's cute. And I've read before (and Charis confirms this for me) about how head-shy they (and I'm sure other snakes) are.

Tonight she actually did go defensive - recoiled into the 's' position. No bite though as I picked her up quickly & her initial panic subsided into "Oh...you. I remember you.". And once I had her, I realized the reason for the reaction - she's almost pre-shed! Not quite blue-eyed yet, but she's heading that way. She's got the pink belly, and her skin looks a bit dull in spots. I checked my previous posts on here & sure enough, this weekend is 6 weeks since the last one. So that calmed my panic because she was acting weird. :lol: I'm getting paranoid anytime anyone here acts weird now. I kept her out since she's not quite blue-eyed & this means no handling next week. She uncharacteristically stayed in my lap, hiding her head under my hand/herself, which she never does (never balls up either - just once, after falling off a bookshelf). Knowing what was going on kept me from panicking too much though, and we just spent a little while being quiet like that. I sprayed her tank down, changed her water, and soaked her moss before I put her back in, and got my humidifier going so I can keep the humidity up for her for the next week or so.

And now I have Princess Bindi perched on my shoulder for some snuggles. She's doing much better now that I've reminded her that I'm still around and will be bugging her more often again. She's been trying some new fruits lately as I picked up some baby food in different flavors. Wasn't initially impressed with peaches or pears, but she just got peaches for the second time last night & ate all of it. I really need to place a huge insect order again soon too. Starting to run low on numerous things, especially since she's been sharing with Pancake lately. 

Pancake's doing okay. Still HATES her Denamarin with a passion, which is making that difficult. I mixed it with a little fruit baby food today after getting the okay from the vet and it helped a tad....but not much. I've been able to get more food into her today though, with being home. I hate that I'm gone so much with work...I just can't give her as many feedings as I want, or spread out as much as I'd like. She's dropped some weight, which is making me really nervous. She was 520g on 4/22. Two days later she was down to 500g and held at that for a few days. And last night she weighed in at 480g before bed, after our last feeding. I'm going to email the vet tomorrow, especially if she's down again tonight. 

So the next one on the list of "causing mommy lots of worry and panic" is Ebony.  She freaked out badly at the thunderstorm we had on Tuesday night, and wouldn't stop hiding, first inside the couch (the liner attached to the bottom had a hole in it, she'd crawl into it) & then in the bathroom. After we confirmed she was freaked out by the storm, we left her alone (I'd been panicking that she was sick or hurt). Thought that was the end of it, but she's still acting a little strange. She was still spending quite a bit of time in the couch yesterday, even after the weather was fine again. Then we started wondering if she'd peed in there because it smelled. Then I got home from work yesterday & there were three sizable wet spots between the door & the hermit crab tank. They don't smell all that strongly of urine, but I'm pretty sure it was. Cleaned it up, apartment still smells like something! So today...wet spots in the same place again, she peed a second time last night. Cleaned it up AGAIN, and also pulled the liner off the bottom of the couch. Felt & smelled the carpet under the couch and nothing smells weird down there, so I'm not sure if it was just on the liner or what.

Aaaanyway...now the problem is determining whether it's behavioral or health. I'm probably calling the vet for her tomorrow, especially if she pees again tonight. My ex suggested it might be a UTI, though I don't know if there'd be any cause for it or what. She gets wet food & has for around a month, I think. She's still not eating quite enough most days, but I don't know that that would factor in. I'm also probably going to get some Cat Attract litter this weekend, and find out what the proper enzymatic cleaner is to take away the smell so she doesn't continue peeing just because it smells like it. I don't know what else to do past that. It's silly to hope it's a health issue, especially after dealing with Pancake's health issues, but at least that should have an easy enough solution. I don't know what to do if it's behavioral.

Edit: I totally forgot to mention one of the reasons I came to update - I started working again on the animal emergency care sheets today!  I have Bindi and Pancake done. Working on Charis now, and trying to figure out what basic care information to include in case my roomie or Jackie have to take care of her. So far I have her personal information (sex, approximate age, adoption date, weight, food/water specifics, tank specs), primary/secondary/emergency vet info, and food/enrichment/weight charts, and a guide for feeding protocol. I think I'm going to include signs for shedding, care info for that time, & what to do with a shed gone badly. Also a behavior/body language guide that has information on handling, and a list of emergency symptoms. I'm not sure if there's anything else to include after that or not. Any suggestions are welcome! After Charis's info is done, I'll probably do Ebony, and then the hermit crabs. Hoping to at least get the hedgies & Charis done so I can print them out this weekend as I really need to start tracking their weight & such better.


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## FinnickHog

Silly Charis. There's no point acting tough around the person who feeds you! Illidan gets a little touchy when he starts to turn pink too. She's shedding so much, it's awesome! Sherlock couldn't care less about snoot boops. He climbs up onto my finger when I boop him. But it completely depends on the snake and balls really are notorious for being head shy.

I'm glad Bindi is getting back into a routine! Finn's never had peaches. He didn't like pears though, at all :lol:. He even made a icky face.

I really hope Pancake's weight stabilizes. Poor girl has been through so much.

Ebony, too. That's so sad. Did you try putting a backup litter box where she's been peeing? When my first cat had a UTI she'd go all over, not just in one main place. I hate to say it, but at this point it sounds behavioural, which means really appealing litter, cleaner with the pee-breakdown enzyme (I like Nature's Miracle, not sure if you have that one there), and if need be, limiting her movement around the house until she gets the hang of things again. A friend recently got two barn cat kittens and had to confine them to the space between the back door and the rest of the house (basically a small mud room) for quite a while until they got the hang of going in the box, because they were so weirded out by the environmental change. I had to do the same thing with Oz when he forgot how to go outside for a while there. Barricades everywhere and in the crate if I wasn't home. It sucked, but it worked.

My sheets are pretty simple, but anyone who will have to take care of my crew already has a fairly good idea of what to do and knows everyone's personalities. Here's some samples:

Header on the whole file:


> *Emergency contact info:*
> My Cell: (Cell number)
> 
> The closest exotic vet:
> Park Veterinary Centre
> 101 Broadway Blvd
> Sherwood park, AB
> T8H 2A8
> 780 467-1119
> 
> Oz's vet in Camrose:
> Camrose Veterinary Hospital
> 4712 41 St
> Camrose, AB
> T4V0Z6
> 780 672-3171
> *OZ IS REACTIVE WITH VETS*
> 
> If you're working with the saltwater fish tank and have flu-like symptoms:
> Go to emergency and tell them you have been exposed to Palytoxin
> List your symptoms
> To prevent this, use gloves and tongs, not fingers!


A sample entry:


> Sherlock (Mexican Black Kingsnake, Black)
> Adoption Date: Aug 2014
> 
> Daily Care
> Morning:
> Make sure he's not dead (don't use your finger!)
> Check his heat tape wall
> Check water dish (you may have to fill it on top of him)
> 
> Weekly Care
> Feed two pinkies or hoppers once a week. Watch your fingers and use the tongs!
> Rinse and fill water dish
> 
> Maintenance
> Scoop poop and change substrate as needed
> Play with snake when you have time. Again, watch your fingers. The pink snake hook is his.
> 
> Notes:
> Mice are in the freezer door. He gets the smallest ones out of what's in there.


After all of the individual entries, I then have a list of all the animals in the house, name, species, room, and living quarters. Some of them are in odd places and could be forgotten. Like this:


> Salamanders
> Squee and Shaw
> Living room
> Under Pepper


I'd love to see some samples of yours when they're finished, in case I forgot something!


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## Lilysmommy

I keep wondering if her shedding pace is normal or not! Like, it seems to be from what I've read, but it just seems to happen so much. :lol:

The problem with barricades is the apartment is too open to do that too much. The kitchen, dining room, and living room, are all quite open to each other, and the kitchen is so small I'd hate to barricade her just in there. Then we have the two bedrooms - I can't have her in mine due to Pancake's tote, and I don't know that roomie wants to risk her peeing in theirs!! And the bathroom is even smaller than the kitchen, sigh.

We do have Nature's Miracle, I'll grab some on Saturday when I go to Petsmart. The only thing I can think of that's changed is that I added a bunch of litter to her box on Saturday when I scooped it - but that was several days before the behavior started, and I can't figure out why more litter would cause that kind of reaction. She seems to like digging in it, and more is better than less, right? It's still only 4-5" deep, I think. If it comes down to drastic measures, we can figure something out to barricade her in the kitchen, maybe. Hopefully that won't be necessary.

The two people that are my back-ups for my critters (roomie & Jackie) know a little about different animals & both know where everyone is, at least. But there's enough that each don't know about some animals that I figure I'll just do some general care info for each animal, just to cover the bases. Ebony will be the easiest, both are familiar with cats anyway. Jackie obviously knows hedgehogs, but I have all of their general care for the roomie. And I need the general care on Charis for both of them since no one has much experience with reptiles.

Here's a sample of Charis's personal info page as it's the shortest (Bindi's diet section is long, of course):



> Name: Charis -my last name-
> Birthdate: unknown, estimated age ~8 years
> Adoption date: 12/5/15
> Sex: Female (confirmed via probing)
> Weight: 1350g
> Personality: Very laid back. Will startle & jerk when first touched in tank - touch once, then go ahead & scoop up carefully. Rarely bites (only if mistaking you for food - follows after holding very still, then wiggling head back & forth slightly), rarely balls up. Likes to explore cautiously. Will try to climb - be careful as she doesn't have good balance & is heavy-bodied, so likely to fall. High falls can cause serious harm. Likes to find a sheltered place (behind/under pillow or blanket, etc.) to curl up in after tired of exploring.
> 
> Food and Water
> 
> Water: Kansas City tap water
> Food: whole rats (large to extra large, can manage small jumbo), whole guinea pig (extra small to small). Food weight ~200g - should be 1-1.5x the thickness of thickest part of snake's body. Food purchased from Pet World Lawrence (local) or ordered online from Hare-Today & kept frozen until use.
> Supplements/medications: currently none
> 
> Environment
> 
> Sleeping area: Favors middle-of-tank fake desert rock hide
> Temperature: 80-82F ambient, 95F hot spot
> Heating system: Heat mat on back, no thermostat; 100w CHE lamp with Zilla thermostat for hot spot (front left corner, above wood half-log); use temperature gun to verify hot spot temperature
> Humidity: Must stay 55-70%; keep between 65-75% when pre-shed until shed is complete
> Light schedule: 8am-8pm, light on timer


I like your little list of schedule things! I may add in my schedule for each animal once I have that done. I'm working on it now...though I should've gone to bed two hours ago. Oops? :lol:

For their veterinary info, I have the name of the vet that usually sees them, the name of the vet clinic (with the website link next to it), phone number, address, and hours they're open during so that whoever's taking care of them have a quick reference for who they can contact if needed.

I also have contact information listed for both my roomie & Jackie - name, relation, phone number, address, and what they can be contacted for (roomie for immediate care, Jackie as a backup & for long-term care). Just in case someone that isn't one of those two people were to be in charge of the critters (being boarded or petsat by someone else).

Hm...now that I'm thinking through potential situations, I'm wondering if I should make up a smaller "bare essentials" list of everyone, location, and the emergency contacts to post on the fridge. In case someone comes in due to an emergency & needs to contact someone who can care for the animals.

....I like to overthink and overprepare, can you tell? :lol:


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## FinnickHog

I think her shedding is perfectly normal. She's on a much more normal, steady feeding regime now, which will cause her to shed more. Illidan sheds every 6 weeks or so, too.

Darn open concept layouts. Hopefully the Nature's Miracle removes the smell and she stops thinking it's okay to potty there and the problem is solved.

When you have 384547859546438393 animals you need to include the schedule or I think my helper's head would explode :lol:. I've simplified it down to the basics because odds are I'll never be gone over a week and I don't want to be overwhelming. At some point in the near future I'm going to compile an emergency pet manual with absolutely everything in there.

I forgot to add it here, but I also have a list of where supplies and emergency kits are located, and what to use when. My two main vet contacts are posted on the fridge on the back of a picture of Oz, so it just looks like a cute picture, but if I leave I can flip it and there's all the stuff.

Being overprepared is way better than being underprepared. When Rocket's CHE nearly burnt the room down I realized I had to get my you-know-what together in case anything serious happened. As I was running around grabbing totes and carriers and animals through the smoke I knew that I needed to plan everything out for next time. Now the carriers and totes are easily accessible and obvious to anyone in the rooms, emergency kits are labeled and obvious to a degree, and I have exit strategies in place for everything except the saltwater tank and the frog tank, which, sadly, will not make it out of a fire due to weight and the inhabitants being skittish. But everything else should survive now. I know they say to get yourself safe and leave everything else, but the firefighters here are volunteers and I just can't trust them the way I can trust myself to get everything out. So I agree completely that excessive planning is good, as long as you can keep it all straight in an emergency. I go over everything every so often to make sure I remember it all in a crisis, and I've made it as simple and obvious for crazy stressed me to handle.

As for sleep, bah, who needs it?! :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, I keep getting told that I have too many animals, or have a lot of animals, and I just look at whoever says that and go "...Wanna bet?". Because I know several people, you included, that have more! Gotta have good pet sitters once you get to more than 2 or 3. At least you're good to your helper & leave good instructions for everyone's care. It's even more of a nightmare petsitting when the owners leave half-uh...hearted instructions. Also I would have more animals if I wasn't dealing with mental health currently! It's still not ruled out for the future - I still want a gecko, dang it. :lol: 

Ooooh, I didn't think about a list & how-to for emergency supplies! That sounds like a good idea, I may add something like that in to my sheets as well. Glad you mentioned it!

Yeah, there is NO chance of me getting just myself out without attempting to grab every animal, at the very least. Someone would need to hold me down outside if any of them was left inside, especially if no one else was going in for them. Unfortunately, the crabs are likely to be left as well, for the same reason - if anyone's dug down, I couldn't find them in time & they're just as likely to die anyway, and I won't disturb them for tornado warnings due to the frequency & stress involved with that too. However, if there is a definite imminent danger (actual apartment building fire), I do have a Critter Keeper with some of their substrate in it next to the tank & if I have time, I'll try to grab anyone who's above ground to get them out. But everyone else comes first as they're easier to grab & get out. At least we have two escape routes since we're on the ground floor, and both are very close.

I also kind of want to work out & write down the step-by-step plans for what to do in the event of different emergencies & post them in our living room or on the fridge or something. That way roomie has them & can read them over if something happens while I'm at work or away. We already had one situation like that, when the power went out. It went okay & I was able to respond quickly to tell them what to do, but that might not be the case next time! And that way I also have step-by-step directions to follow if I'm panicking & not thinking clearly. 

I also need to clean my room up soon so that I can get things better organized & have what I need, like the carriers, out & easy to grab. Maybe that'll be a project for tomorrow. I'm going to try & finish care sheets today & see if I can get them printed out as well.


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## FinnickHog

Geckos are awesome! But definitely get yourself stable, make sure Pancake and Ebony are all good, and then expand. Doing it now would likely drive you crazy from stress.

I'm glad I'm not alone in my grabbing every pet I can in an emergency scheme :lol:. We only have one door (weird, right?) so finding an exit is easy, either the door or the second story window, which wouldn't be good. I have a list of notes for if the power goes out here, which I've heard is quite common in winter when heavy snow takes out entire powerlines. I have to manually stir the saltwater tank's water to keep the fish and corals alive, so that will be awful.

I just cleaned the pet room. And then Rocket got loose. Now I get to start over :lol:. It's important though, just for safety.


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## Lilysmommy

Yeah, I don't need any more stress right now. :lol: Any new additions will be towards the end of the year or next year. I still have plans to carry out for everyone I currently have anyway! So that'll likely keep me busy for the rest of the year. I want to get the hedgehogs & Charis moved into their vivs once I get them, I want to set Charis's viv up as bio-active (and possibly try it for Bindi too, that will depend on time & energy), and I want to get Ebony switched to raw and build her an enclosure in our patio so she has a "catio" to hang out in occasionally. 

Huh, that is weird that you only have one door! Easy to remember though, I guess. Can you get a small generator or battery pack or something that would allow you to plug in small aquarium fans for the tanks? I would imagine having to stir the tanks for more than a day or two would be a huge headache (and arm ache!). How often would you have to stir them?

:lol: Rocket really wanted to keep you busy today, huh? And yeah, safety is why I need to get mine cleaned back up. Right now I wouldn't be able to find much in terms of emergency supplies as everything's blocked off by extra supplies, blankets, etc. I need to see if I can figure out a better arrangement now that I have Pancake's tote in there as well. 

My self-care today has been lacking, but I'm feeling really good anyway because my animal care kicked butt. :lol: I finally got the crab tank back up to scratch, rinsed out all of their shells & cleaned out the holders (shell shops), changed their water, changed their food, etc. Everyone's burrowed and I think it's partially due to my not keeping the humidity where it should be lately.  I feel bad for neglecting them so much recently. Hopefully they come back up soon now that I have it back to their preferred levels. 

I also got Nature's Miracle Urine Destroyer spray & sprayed down the area where Ebony's been peeing. Also added a second litter box near that & put Cat Attract litter in it. Hoping this will do the trick!! I called Wildside back home & talked to one of the women that runs it, who has tons of cat experience. She agreed with all of this, as well as giving her more hiding spots to take cover in for storms, and if she continues to pee on the carpet, confining her until she gets back in the litter box habit. She agreed that it sounded more likely to be behavioral than a health problem like a UTI, so we're holding off on the vet visit for now. 

And even though I didn't take much time for myself today, now that I'm caught up on animal care & have my schedule laid out for everyone's care & social time (also finished that today!), I can spend more time tomorrow relaxing & such.


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## FinnickHog

I totally want to see Ebony's catio when it's done!

A lot of people out here stick a small generator in their garage, but of course, I don't have a garage here. Or a shed, even. So finding something practical that I can run inside the house is the tough part. The ones I keep getting recommended to me run on gasoline, which means they can't be in the house.

A lady on the reef forums I go on had her power go out for a week a few months ago. They were scooping buckets of water and pouring it back into the tank every 20 minutes for seven days. The inhabitants need constant circulation for food delivery and to keep the nasty stuff from growing everywhere so it can get pretty bad. And then there's the problem with keeping the water at about 79F with no electricity. They had the fireplace going constantly and it was barely enough. She still ended up losing more than half of her stock, both fish and corals. So that won't be fun when it happens. I'm glad I mostly have really easy beginner corals that could survive the apocalypse in my tank.

The organization part is the tough part. I have a tendency to stack things, and pick the complete wrong thing to put on the bottom. Before I fixed it I had Finn's fleece liners on the bottom of a pile of pet bedding. I use the liners once a week at least but they were so hard to get to :lol:

I figure animals one day, yourself the next day is good enough . Hopefully the crabbies are back up again soon. I can't believe how sensitive they are considering they're sold as easy pets for kids. Yikes.

I hope that does the trick to get Ebony back to pottying in the litter. I really hope you don't end up having to confine her at all. That always really sucks.

Yay relaxation day tomorrow! I think I get tomorrow off, too!


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## Lilysmommy

...Man, I am never getting a saltwater tank. :lol: They're very cool, but jeeze. I'll leave that to you!! And send good wishes that you never have the power out for too long. Have you looked into smaller generators that are charged via electricity? I can't find on the page how long this one lasts, but you can plug it in to charge prior to an emergency & then it might be able to relieve you at least a little with the tanks. http://www.wayfair.com/Mr.-Emergency-1500-Watt-Generator-GG5515-MREM1001.html

Yeah, I have trouble organizing my pet supplies closet. It's hard to get into the stuff in the back of it, but I have a ton of the crabs' stuff back there. I don't need it often, but it's a huge workout to get anything when I do need it. I need to go back through it all & make a list of what I have & the general location so I don't spend an hour pinching my fingers, causing avalanches, and swearing up a storm trying to find one thing. :lol:

Yeeeep. They're such complicated little critters that are consistently subjected to major abuse and neglect in the pet industry.  It's really horrible. I wish I could do more to help more of them, but I have to remember how big they get & where my limits are space-wise. I really don't want to add any more into my tank, with the size of Shelob & Frodo. And the others will probably be catching up before long as they tend to grow faster & molt more often when they're smaller. I can't upgrade them again until maybe next year, and I need to be careful not to go TOO big while I'm still in an apartment & not a definite long-term living situation.

Hope you're having a good day off today!  I have some plans for cleaning, but otherwise I'm playing with Ebony, doing animal care, and thinking about going to read for a couple hours in the park between Pancake feedings.


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## twobytwopets

One thing that has helped me greatly in getting things done was I have two lists on my fridge that are basically dry erase. One is my to-do and one is my ta-da list. If everything on my list wasn't done, it would be bad for me, but I couldn't see the other things that got done on top of my to do list. 
Add me to the club of need to organize. I have been sick with bronchitis or something like that for a couple weeks now and normal household chores aren't getting done much less bigger projects. 
Also add me to the list that has a zoo, and it's somewhat tamed down right now.


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## Lilysmommy

I've considered dry erase as I have one for keeping track of the crabs' food & water changes, but I'm on my laptop almost constantly when I'm at home, so I keep my lists on here. I have a ton of schedule & bill related stuff all organized in one Notepad document that always stays open. Gets messy sometimes, but I usually keep it in order!

How many animals do you have anyway? I always forget just how big your zoo is!! And I hope you're starting to feel better & back to normal soon...that does not sound like fun.


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## twobytwopets

Grand total at the house we have... 14, that's not too many???? But there is also 5 people. So that's less than 3 a person.

My dry erase is just a paper in a document protector.


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## Artemis-Ichiro

I don't know how the 2 of you do it! I have one human child (7), Ichiro and the husband and and that's more than enough!


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## FinnickHog

I had a dry erase/corkboard combo at my parents' place and I loved it. Until it got covered in "important things" that I didn't want to erase :roll:. I think I'll bring it with me and hang it specifically in the pet room and that might keep the extra clutter down...

Can we get a full list, Two!? 14 is pretty good. I have *count* 23 right now. I included the fish and the shrimp but not the crabs and snails in there.

I'll definitely look into that little generator. Thanks!

I actually just woke up. My sleep schedule is all backwards again. I go around in circles :lol:. Gotta get ready to head to a friend's barbecue, and then I'm going to chip away at the graphic novel I started the other night. Yay!


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## Lilysmommy

I feel like human kids must count for several animals all in one, they take so much time & work. So I'd say you're doing pretty good still Artemis!! I'll stick with my critters for now...I can barely manage myself much less a second human. It's generally frowned upon to put children in a cage for most of the day, after all. :lol:

That's why I like the computer doc I keep - it can be as long as I want if I have too many important notes I don't want to get rid of! 

Sounds like a good day to me, Ashley!  I didn't do quite as much for myself as planned (due to the impromptu 1.5 hours spent on the chinchilla care sheet), but I did eat something with vegetables in it? And I'm getting ready to do the first day of a month-long workout challenge that I'm doing with a group of people online (to encourage each other & whatnot). May not be able to do every day, but I figure it's a good step towards getting myself exercising & see if it helps with brain things. And....drumroll please...I FINALLY called the employee assistance program that my manager told me about. It involved some tears and a panic attack, but it finally got done. I now have the name of a counselor that I can call tomorrow afternoon or after to set up my first appointment. Hopefully that call involves less panicking. It's probably not going to happen tomorrow as Pancake's vet visit is at 5pm, so I'm already going to be low on free time & spoons due to that. But I'll try to make myself get it done on Tuesday, at least.


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## FinnickHog

I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.squishable.com/pc/opensq...uishable_Mini/Mini+Squishable+Hermit+Crab+III

Disclaimer: these things are horribly addictive.


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## Lilysmommy

Yessss, I seriously want that one.  I already have the giant hedgehog one. I want the hermit crab, snake, and a cat one so I can have the whole crew. :lol:

I tried calling the counselor today and no luck. The next thing they have open is 5/23, and it sounds like their hours won't work anyway - her last appointment is the same time I typically get home from work, and appointments only on weekdays. I don't want to go straight after work because I need to come home & give Pancake her empty-stomach meds first. I know I shouldn't be so discouraged after only two no's, but still kind of struggling with it.

Animal news, Ebony doesn't have a UTI. So apparently just a brat. :roll: She's using the new litter box with the Cat Attract litter though, and I was able to praise her & give her pets after she used it when we got home, so hopefully positive reinforcement will help. The carpet still smells, so I need to rent a carpet cleaner machine after all & see if I can get it completely clean. Going to have to wait for the weekend though, I just don't have the time or energy after work & the next few days are going to be busy with Pancake again.


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## FinnickHog

The snake is soooo cute!

That's too bad. Can you find a place that does appointments on weekends? I know our medical systems are vastly different, but there's a location in Calgary that has a mixture of students and teachers and their pricing is on a sliding scale depending on what you can pay. Since there's student therapists, a lot of them prefer appointments on weekends so it doesn't interfere with their classes. Do you poor Americans have anything like that? You can also try calling your local hospital's reception and asking them for places, or even calling smaller clinics, and they should have a list for you.

That's so weird that she said no. All of the ones I've seen will stay an extra hour to see people if that's what they need . I'm sure there's someone out there who will work. I have to go and see Boris tomorrow as follow up from being hospitalized, so that'll be fun. He's so Ukrainian! Last time I went he told me what my last name means. I had no idea it translated to "the guy who fixed the wheels on the horse-drawn carts" .

I'm glad Ebony isn't sick, even if she is being a dork :lol:. It sounds like she's getting the hang of it again so that's good!


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## twobytwopets

I agree, you are close enough to a major university so you might want to check in Lawrence. They might have placed that would have different hours because of students.


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## Lilysmommy

I might try to call the assistance program again today if I get a chance, but I actually energy to do physical things like cleaning today, so that might take priority. :lol: Our new vacuum just arrived and I'm have one of those "adulthood" moments and I'm very excited to sweep our disgusting carpets! But I should have time to call tomorrow if I don't get around to it today. This time when I call, I'm going to see if they can check the hours of a place before giving me the name, or give me several of them to check with.

I'll keep Lawrence in mind, but that'll be a later option if I end up running into too many dead ends. It's still a 30-minute drive for me, and I'd rather not have to do that unless I have to. Plus it'd limit me to only weekends for sure, I couldn't manage that during the week. Sounds like that probably wouldn't be as much of an issue though, at least.

Thank you both for the suggestions though! I'll write them down & keep them in mind in case this assistance program continues to fail at finding me offices that will actually work. But I'll give them a couple more chances, at least. And I hope your follow-up goes well, Ashley! Sounds like a neat last name! :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

Just a few updates!

Charis - She finished shedding! And we got another perfect shed.  That makes two in a row, so I think we've established a good pre-shed routine that maintains the humidity she needs. Run my humidifier in the room & spray the tank once a day to make sure humidity stays in the 70's or so. She's on the prowl now and I just bought more rats for her today, so she'll be fed tomorrow night.

Bindi - She's trying a pinky mouse tonight for the first time! Should be interesting to see if she maintains her Goathog reputation & eats it. 

Pancake - She didn't eat much last night or today, so I'm keeping a nervous eye on her tonight. I've been continuing one dose of anti-nausea meds a day and she doesn't show signs of gagging or throwing up, so I'm leaning towards it being that she doesn't like the new soup as much. :roll: But I may try two doses of the meds again tomorrow & see if she does better. I picked up some new kibble for her today as well, she's trying a flavor of Acana dog food tonight. Crushed up the kibble for her & gave her 10g. Hopefully she eats something...she's running a ton on her wheel & getting it good & messy, so at least that's a good sign. And pooping quite a bit, so she's at least getting enough for that. :lol: 

Hermit crabs - I've been a bad owner to them recently. I discovered yesterday & today that their heat was much hotter than I thought. Not dangerous for them, but it was around 91F as the high today, which is hotter than they like. It was also causing the humidity to stay lower than I'd like, though also still safe. I took the insulation off the back of the heating mats, then unplugged one of the mats. That did the trick - the temp is now 82F and humidity has risen to 80%. I think this is why everyone (except Shelob) had dug down, to get out of the heat. It's what they would do in the wild with very high temps. I feel bad for not noticing sooner though.  Sorry guys! I got them a couple presents today at the pet store to try & make up for it, I'll try & post a picture tomorrow! Hoping if everyone resurfaces soon, I can take them all out so I can really dig into the tank and make sure the sand is the appropriate consistency/moisture and then redecorate the tank a bit.


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## FinnickHog

Yay, good job Charis! I'm glad someone is behaving for you.

I hope Bindi likes the pinky. I bought some extra ones from the local store, but then the garter started eating them, so Finn will probably have to wait a few more weeks to try one.

That silly hedgie just doesn't like change, does she? Hopefully she decides it's not so bad tonight and eats it. At least she's running!

Darn touchy crabbies. How long will it take them to notice the temperature change while they're buried?


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## Lilysmommy

Predictably, Bindi ate the pinky. :lol: So now I can add scrambled eggs & pinky mice to her menu. I'd eventually like to make one of the weekend days a whole prey day for her, so I may start that soon now that we have our first whole prey item.

Pancake is trying to give me an ulcer, I swear. Ate maybe 15g last night & only munched a couple bugs today. We're going back to our old medicine schedule (anti-nausea meds 2x/day, 5 am & pm), and she's due for a vitamin B shot tonight too. I also made up a batch of the old soup recipe today when I got home, with her old kibble. The new one smelled different even to me, so probably too big a change for the picky little brat. :roll: I was hoping all of the other stuff in the soup would convince her to overlook the change, but silly me! I'm going to give her the old recipe tonight and hope she eats. If she doesn't, it's back to syringe-feeding tomorrow. If she does eat it, I'll give her a few days with it, then start to slooooooowly mix in the new recipe with it & see if she'll cooperate better with a nice slow switch. She nosed around in the bowl of new kibble last night, but didn't eat any. 

I'm not actually sure! I'm hoping maybe they'll take note in the next couple days, if they're not molting, but we'll see. They may actually be molting, I haven't really kept track of their disappearances at all recently, so I'm not sure. I can't imagine the bigger guys like Frodo & Sam are molting, but who knows.


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## FinnickHog

Bindi is awesome :lol:. Has she gotten over her fear of live bugs yet?

I had a cat once who came from the Humane Society who would only eat Friskies. No people food, no wet cat food, nothing. It drove my family nuts. He never did eat any other kibble, but we managed to put some supplements on the food to make it at least a bit more healthy. Hopefully she decides not to be like that. At least there's always bugs, I guess.

Crabbies, come back up soon!


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## Lilysmommy

I haven't actually tried recently! It's so convenient to just toss the frozen ones in a bowl for her. Don't have to worry about them getting loose & terrorizing my bug-hating roomie. :lol: Next time I get an order of something, I'll have to test her. 

Sounds like one of Jackie's cats, they'll only eat Fancy Feast wet food, I think. Silly critters! I really hope Pancake doesn't do that though. The food was the cause of all of this! The quality bothers me less than the high fat content, since that's actually a major threat to her health at this point. But I'd still rather she switch to something good quality for my peace of mind. The two foods I got are pretty small bags, so if she's not a fan by the time I get through half of them, I'll have something else to try her on. I'm probably going to order online as I just don't have the time & energy for going to stores. Doesn't help that the decent stores are all 20+ minutes away. It's a good thing that I can get Ebony's wet food at Petsmart and that the grocery stores for human food are pretty close or I'd really be in trouble. :lol:


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## Lilysmommy

Oh, I have pictures to share too! Almost forgot I wanted to post some.

First, I misbehaved yesterday & got some presents for the hermit crabs to apologize for screwing up their parameters. The rock is red volcano rock & it's nice & rough, perfect for them to climb on. I think Pippin, the smallest, might even be able to hide in the upper window. And the cave is big enough that even Shelob should be able to fit in it. I think I'm going to put some moss in it since they all like hiding in the moss pit so much.



Then I misbehaved today & got myself something...Look familiar, Ashley? :lol:



I was walking by a Hallmark store and this little one was in the window. I couldn't resist! Especially after going in to examine them and they're the perfect size for hugging & very very soft, which both help with anxiety. So I figured it was meant to be. 

And then a few pictures of Charis from last night. She ended up around my neck for a while & I decided I could sort bugs with a sneklace. She decided to help after a few minutes.



Then she went exploring and I got a good shot that sums up what life with me is like. :lol:



Pancake's medicine cabinet on top of the microwave, sorting bugs out of bedding with our cookware, snake hanging out on the kitchen counter, and Bindi's stock of bugs and calcium over on the left...I have such a patient roommate! (And okay, even though I'm not all that jumpy about germs & whatnot, I will say that I did wipe down the counter with a clorox wipe after Charis finished exploring. )

And finally we moved to the couch and she did her usual thing of finding a good place to squish in, then turned around and poked her head out to keep an eye on things.


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## FinnickHog

The crabbies had better come up and see their new stuff!

Eeeeee the plushie is so cuuuuuute! If the reptile show wasn't coming up and I didn't have to save my pennies in case I see something I need I'd buy one right now!

Charis is such a cutie. I love her little face in the last picture. I just put Legs away for the night. He was out while we watched Game of Thrones. He's already much calmer than when I first brought him home. I wouldn't trust him loose in the couch yet though :lol:.


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## Lilysmommy

Well, one crab came up, I think it's Eowyn. She chose a new shell too, one of the Babylonia ones. She's currently freaking me out as she's been hanging out in a normal standing position on the sub but completely motionless for at least 2 hours now. I've gotten down by the tank several times, taken a picture...no reaction. Crabs are WEIRD! :roll: 

Pancake's doing good, still eating well & her weight's been maintaining this week, but no gain. Still, I'll accept maintaining. She's running on her wheel & everything too. Her course of antibiotics is up this Saturday, so she'll be happy about one less medicine to take. And as both hedgie girls are coming with me on my visit home, I'll be happy for one less thing to lug along. :lol: I'm going to be super busy on Saturday, getting everyone set for the week & getting all of the hedgehog crap packed up! They're going to have way more luggage than me.

Bindi's good. Only noteworthy thing to say about her is I have her out for cuddles right now and just noticed a huge black crusty splotch on her head quills....I think she annointed with the earthworm she got last night. :roll: Really, Bindi? Did you have to? I I don't have time to cuddle her after a bath tonight, so she'll have to wait until Saturday, sigh. Pancake's going to be getting one too since she's pretty gross after climbing in her soup bowl all week. So I can relax with double hedgie snuggles after I finish my to-do list.

Charis still won't eat for me, I had to pitch the rat after thawing it twice. I think she just hadn't finished digesting her last meal, between how large it was (an almost or just-barely jumbo rat) and the fact that her shed started up not long after she ate & she spent more time in her hide than on her hot spot to digest. She had a huuuuge poop in her tank earlier this week. My roomie's so not on board with feeding her, so she's going to wait until I get back. Hopefully she'll be good & hungry and will eat then! I think she's getting rather comfy in her regular feeding schedule - she hasn't really struck at the last meal or two, though she did eat them. The last thing I remember her striking at was the guinea pig. Her tank parameters look fine to me, though humidity has been a little low the past couple days. Not low enough to cause an issue, but I did run my humidifier yesterday to bump it back up a bit. I'll have to have the roomie run it a couple times while I'm gone to make sure it stays good. And I'm actually glad to have her wait on eating until I get home as I'm taking the space heater with me for the hogs, so her temperature might dip a bit. She's been fine with it low before, in the crappy conditions she was in before, so I'm not too worried, but glad she won't have food to deal with if it does drop.


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## FinnickHog

Silly crabbies! I'm glad someone different is up and about though. Hopefully everyone else catches on quickly.

Weight maintaining is better than nothing. She's been through so much, I'm just glad she's stable. Hedgehogs always choose the nicest stuff to anoint with, don't they? :lol:. 

Is Ebony going away with you and the hedgies as well, or is she staying home? I have to pack for Finn, Oz, and Pepper tonight. I hate packing so I'm currently stalling.

Ball pythons and their silly eating habits! I'm sure she'll be hungry when you get back. Illidan went off his food for something like 8 months once. It was super scary.


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## Lilysmommy

I'm glad it's Eowyn, she's my fearless shield maiden.  Hence the sleeping wide out in the open...I told her she's lucky she's not in the wild or she'd have been eaten an hour ago. :lol: 

Ebony's staying home. I don't think either of us could take more 12-hour trips together. :lol: I'm very happy that the hedgie girls will just be sleeping through the whole drive! Gonna be much easier with them, even if they're going to have more supplies & such.

Good lord, that sounds scary. She's been such a good eater for me so far that I can't imagine she'll go off for too long.


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## Lilysmommy

Ugh, always right before I go. I think there really is something actually wrong with Eowyn. I decided to get into the tank night before last & see what happened. She reacted, but very belatedly & very slowly. Right now I'm thinking she has no/very little energy, though I'm not sure on the why. My guesses are, since she just came up from a molt, she didn't get a chance to finish her exo, she didn't recuperate underground long enough after, or she didn't stock up on food enough before digging down. But I honestly don't know, and I'm just hoping it was something like that & not an environmental factor that could affect the rest of the crew. 

Last night I spoon-fed her some honey and watched her take 5-6 bites. I had to keep jiggling the spoon lightly to remind her it was there. Jiggle, she pinched a bit up, jiggled again, she'd get the bite to her mouthparts, then take a break. That she was interested & trying to eat is encouraging, but I just don't know if it'll be enough. This is the closest I can get to syringe feeding her though.

Last night I left her in the middle of a circle of sustenance - a shell of each fresh & salt water, the spoon of honey, and a flat shell with calcium, earthworm castings, some dry fish/seafood powder, mineral supplement, bee pollen, and crushed nuts. Checking today, I don't think she touched any of that stuff. Both of the shells were empty of water, but I don't know if she drank it or dumped it. I just refilled both and took her out to check. When I had her on my hand, she was trying veeeeeery slowly (and ineffectively) to pinch my palm with her big pincher. I want to be encouraged that she's still showing some attitude, but I'm just so worried by how slow she's being. I don't know what else to do for her either. I posted on my crab forum in case anyone has any better suggestions, but I think I'm doing all I can. The only other thing I may do before I leave tomorrow is move her into an ISO tank I have set up already. But I don't know if it's a good idea to do that so she's alone or if that will stress her enough to possibly kill her.  I hate not being able to do anything. And I hate that this is happening right before I'm gone for 6 days!!


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## FinnickHog

Poor little girl. I hope the crab forum guys can help you out. It's like pets know you're planning on leaving, the way they time this kind of stuff. Get better, little crab!


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## Lilysmommy

Well, no one gave me anything new to try before I left, so. Left her as is and we'll see what I come home to.  Hopefully everyone does okay while I'm gone, of course my anxiety is going through every disaster that COULD happen. :lol: 

The girls did well with the 12 hour car ride! Bindi pooped and peed in her blanket, then dug in it... Seriously Bindi? But that was the biggest issue from them. My car scared the crap out of me halfway through as one tire started making a clunking sound. Turned out to be a loose heat shield, nothing dangerous, but we're taking it in for a full check up this morning just in case. 

The girls met their grandpa, both made him jump with their huffing. :lol: Bindi calmed down faster though and let him pet her nicely. They've settled in pretty well, both ate and wheeled last night. Pancake didn't eat as much as usual, but at least some, and she eats during the day sometimes anyway. SO happy to have made it here and that they both did so well with everything.

I also got a couple pics of how I set them up in the car to add to the travel sticky, going to do that once I have my laptop connected to the internet here. It worked well and I didn't have too many issues keeping them at a good temperature, so that was nice.


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## Artemis-Ichiro

I'm glad you made it wothout any troubles. Enjoy your time there and try to relax!


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## Lilysmommy

Been having a semi-difficult week and a half, so I haven't been posting much. Going to try to get back to usual around here over this week, hopefully. The rest of my trip went well, though the car ended up having several more problems than anticipated. Ended up buying a new vehicle, my first, while I had my dad with me to help out. It's blue!! Which is my favorite thing about it and my main concern when looking. :lol: I'm not big on cars, so I wasn't too picky as long as I had something big enough for animal transportation & BLUE.

The girls did just as well on the trip home, I barely had to do anything with them. We're all very happy to be home though! The at-home crew did well while I was gone. I gave Ebony a dose of Revolution, hoping that might help with her ear troubles. Going to give it a week or so, and if she's still bugging them, it'll be off to the vet. I really need to weigh her again soon too...I'm sure she's losing weight. Need to figure out what to change to stop that. And along with the "animals not eating" fun, Charis is still refusing her food. Second rat is going to be tossed in the trash tomorrow, probably. *sigh* She acts interested at first, but won't strike, and ignores it when left in the tank with her overnight. These two are going to give me ulcers.

Surprisingly, Eowyn the crabby is still with us. I'm not sure if she's doing any better, still not moving around much & has dug a hollow to hang out in near their fake mangrove tree. The other two (yeah two - Pippin, the other small one, came up) are leaving her alone, so I'm reluctant to stress her with a move to the ISO tank...ugh. Hard to know what to do for these guys. Just keeping an eye on her for now with fingers crossed. At least the other two are acting completely normal & look good.

Tonight was a hedgie night. Pancake got a brief foot bath to get some dried poop off a couple toes, then I got Bindi out so we could all snuggle. They really do great at shared cuddle sessions so far. I got a decent enough selfie of the three of us!



They're doing pretty decent at being near each other too, though I'm being cautious. I try to keep their faces apart, just in case, though they haven't shown any signs of aggression towards each other really. A little puffing here & there, but mostly just ignoring while co-existing. Typical hedgie girls. :lol: Here's my armful of hedgie!



And then came cage cleaning, which meant the girls took turns in hedgie jail. Bindi went to sleep, as usual. Pancake, however...



She gets pretty indignant about hedgie jail. :lol:


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## Artemis-Ichiro

So you are the one I have to blame!!' I got my new car recently and "fought" with more salesmen than I had ever wanted to because I asked for silver or blue cars were on the top of my color list but color was NOT a deal breaker and they expected me to pay whatever they wanted to charge because of a color (there were only 3 in town in those colors) and refuse to give that color to another dealer... In the end I won, I got my blue car at the price I wanted to pay and the dealership I got it from had it shipped from out of town because the clowns from the other places refused to give me the car. Lol. 

I'm glad you are back and have your new car in BLUE. 

Now settle back at home and everything will go back to a better normal. 

Ps. Start making those phone calls!!!


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## FinnickHog

Car salesmen can be so ridiculous. It makes me glad I can't drive :lol:. I'm glad you managed to get home though! Silly old car.

I hope Eowyn is alright and just acting funny. I'm glad to hear Pippin is up, too! I still can't believe how difficult those crabs are.

That is a lot of hedgie butts! They're both so freakin cute! I'm glad they're willing to hang out together. That makes snuggle time scheduling way easier.


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## Lilysmommy

Sorry you had so much trouble getting the car you wanted, Artemis! I'm glad I had my dad with me to handle most of the talking...he was friends with the salesman, so we didn't have to deal with too much crap. :lol: And I had no clue what I was doing, and was having a very bad anxiety day the first day we went in, so it was very nice to have an adultier adult along, hah. 

I actually typed out an update on everyone a couple days ago, and then my laptop's internet disconnected right when I went to post & I lost the post, so I got annoyed & went to bed. :roll: So here goes the second try.

Charis is still being a butt. Threw out the second rat after it got her half log hide thoroughly disgusting, and threw the hide out as well. Won't be able to get her more rats until next weekend, unfortunately, but doesn't seem like she'll care anyway. *sigh* I think we're at 5 weeks or so of the food strike now...argh!

Along with Charis, Ebony isn't eating much at all. I'm calling the vet for her Monday because while the sneezing wasn't much of a concern on its own (feline respiratory virus or something...not something that can be cured completely, just managed, if I remember right), her mucous is yellow now, which is a concern. Likely just a round of antibiotics for that, I'm guessing. But I'm anxious about her not eating much, as she's gotten quite skinny.  Guessing the vet will probably yell at me about that. I offered her one of Pancake's kibbles to see what she thought, and she ate a few bites, but hasn't finished the bowl. I'm giving her some of her old kibble from Wildside tonight to see if she'll eat more of that. I thought we had a wet food that she was accepting well, but she's hardly touching even that yesterday & today. I ordered two flavors of Orijen yesterday, so hoping maybe she'll take well to that when it gets here. I'm half considering seeing if she'll show any interest in one of the whole quail I got for Charis, given her past bird-hunting talents, but I'm not sure if she ever ate those or just killed them. She sure didn't show any interest in eating the whole mouse I gave her, just wanted to play! If anyone has any other ideas for picky cats, I'm taking suggestions!!

The hedgies are doing fine. Pancake had stopped eating bugs for a week & a half or so, but has started to eat them again the past couple days. I've been offering her a new wet food as well. Not a brand I like all that much, Nutro, but hey if she'll eat something balanced at this point, I'll take it! She seems to be eating some of it, though not finishing all of it yet. Fingers still crossed though! I ran out of Bindi's Chop containers (at least the ones at my house, think Jackie may have some stored in her freezer), so I opened a sample bag of one of the base mixes from Honest Kitchen last night. She tried a bit, but didn't eat most of it, so I don't know that it'll work out. Going to try making it soupier tonight & see if that changes her mind at all. They have a couple different base mixes though, so maybe one of the others will catch her interest.

Oh, and good news on the crabby front - I'm not sure that she's totally back to normal, but Eowyn did change into a new shell (back to a green turbo, her usual type) and I've seen her at the food bowls the past few days. So I'm very much encouraged by that! Hopefully she's shaking off whatever was affecting her.

And tentative good news on my front as well. I finally called the assistance program again today & got the name for three doctors, all at the same facility. The place has a "request appointment" form on their website, which is amazing, and even lets you choose if you prefer email for a contact method. So I already have a very good impression, heh. Requested an appointment with my first choice out of the three and included my availability, so fingers crossed. Really hope this works out and I can stop having to face stressful phone calls!


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## FinnickHog

Oh Charis, don't be a ball python, be a kingsnake! Eat everything all the time!

Poor Ebony. I really hope she likes the Orijen. My pets have all loved it so far. I'm pretty sure they put cocaine for cats and dogs in it, based on how fast it gets eaten around here. Have you tried giving her boiled or lightly baked chicken or turkey? When my golden retriever was nearing the end and on more controlled narcotics than I'd ever seen before or will again, I would make him roast chicken soup, which contained organic, salt free chicken broth, lots of flakes of chicken, plus some skin, the chicken fat from the bottom of the baking pan, boiled peas and carrot slices, and a bit of smushy dog food. That was the only thing he would eat. I started adding fish filets and a few other things for nutrition once I realized it was permanent, but the chicken soup to start with worked really well just to bulk him back up.

Better to be eating Nutro than nothing. I'm just happy Pancake is stable again, even if she is a bit picky.

Yay Eowyn! I hope she's alright now!

And that's great news for you, too. Hopefully your first pick can work around your schedule no problem.


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## Lilysmommy

She ate some of the Purina One that she'd been getting at Wildside, so going to keep that in her bowl until the Orijen arrives. I also opened a can of Wellness sliced salmon wet food & she's currently chowing down on that! Hopefully she eats a decent amount of it. She likes to like the gravy off more than eat the food. :roll: But she does like her fish and I watched her eating some as well. I'll try some cooked chicken next if she keeps being this picky and not eating enough. I also have some tuna steaks or something in the freezer for the hermit crabs, so maybe I'll try cooking a bit of that, since she likes fish so much. I'm also considering making some bone broth in general, to add to kibble and/or wet food since she likes licking the gravy off so much. Maybe that'll tempt her into eating more of the meat once she's licked the gravy off so I'm not throwing so much away.

And agreed on Pancake! Right now I'm just happy if she'll eat anything that I don't have to keep making in the blender. :lol: I'm going to have to make another batch of soup soon, which means I need to get more kibble for it too, sigh. Was hoping to avoid getting a bag of that crappy food she was eating before, but I don't think I have a choice with how picky she is. I don't want to risk her going off food again!


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## Lilysmommy

Good news on two fronts!

Pancake is officially favoring the Nutro wet food. I'm buying more later today or tomorrow and will be giving her enough to eat only that. She finished what I gave her last night, banged the bowl around repeatedly in protest, and grudgingly ate some soup this morning when no more wet food showed up. :lol: So sounds like she's officially accepting something that's definitely balanced...which is great! Unfortunately I looked up the info on it last night and the DMB numbers are something like 54 for protein and 22 for fat. No wonder Picky Princess likes it. :roll: So I'm also going to search around the store a bit to find some other pate chicken flavor wet foods with lower fat and see if I can start mixing something else in. Slow but steady progress!

And once I find a bit more information to send on, I officially have my first psych appointment in two weeks!  And with my first choice doctor, which is even nicer. Relieved to finally have that done, and hopefully it'll prove to be helpful.


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## twobytwopets

Awesome!!! I seen that you posted and was really hoping for some good news. I must admit, I'm more happy to hear about your appointment than pancake. I know that sounds bad, but everyone needs you to be in your best form. Although I'm very happy to hear that she found a good.
Editing to add, and cause a laugh. 
Day just got a bit better. Max, Boston terrier, just ran into the bathroom to get a drink. There is a small leak in the shower head and he prefers that water. So he runs in and jumps in the tub. Only problem was there was about a foot of water still in there from my son's bath.


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## Lilysmommy

....well, I was going to post a happy post about having 4 of the 5 hermit crabs up. And then I noticed no, all 5 crabs are up...and one was shell-less. So cue immediate panic attack and frantic action to get the little one out, rinsed off, into a container with shells and start getting the iso tank set up properly for them. I couldn't tell if their abdomen was dried out already or not, and didn't want to mess with them enough to tell. If it is, they don't have a good chance at all. They did hop into a shell very shortly after I put them in the container of shells, though it's a little too big. I don't know if they'll stay in it. But I have them set up with everything they need in the iso tank now, and have it covered with a blanket for privacy. All I can do now is wait and keep fingers crossed. I guess I'll be tired for bed now after the panic attack...agh. 

I did giggle at the Max story earlier though, Two! Is he like my old family dog & think water & baths are basically acid? Bet that was a nasty surprise for him if so. :lol:


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## twobytwopets

Fingers crossed you caught the crab in time. 
Yes Max thinks he's being killed if he gets wet. He gives me issues about going outside if it's sprinkling. And now he's apparently afraid of cicadas. Thank goodness I don't live back home anymore or he'd freak out every night. Only have to deal with them once in his life.


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## Lilysmommy

Good crabby news!! She's switched into a green turbo shell that fits her better and is staying put in it. I took another peek in an hour or so after I got home from work and she was at the food bowl.  Stayed there for at least an hour! I'm pretty optimistic at this point, though I'm still not sure when I'll try moving her back into the main crabitat.

I weighed Bindi tonight and honestly, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought she was looking a little rounder than usual recently, though admittedly, I mostly see her with her butt all tucked in while she's sleeping. :lol: But anyway, her weight was at around 443g, exactly where it's been for the past few months! I don't know if she's just an easy keeper or if this diet just works perfectly for her, but I'm really pleased. I was expecting to have to adjust the balance eventually to keep her weight stable, but so far so good.


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## FinnickHog

Yay, excellent news today! Now just get Charis eating again, convince Ebony to put on some weight, and meet your new counsellor and then maybe everything will stay good for a while!


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## Lilysmommy

Meant to update sooner, but it's been a bad week. I do have good news on most of the animals though.

*Bindi*: She wanted nothing to do with the two base mixes from Honest Kitchen that I offered her, which was a little disappointing. Those would've been nice to use for the veggie portion of her diet, but nope. On the plus side, I started giving her the Chop mix again a few days ago and she's gone back to eating about 1/2-3/4 of what I give her of that. I'm wondering if she just got bored with it or something. I'm considering trying to make a mixture of baby food veggies & see if she'll eat that or not. If she will, I could switch between the two mixes if she gets bored of one. Other than that, she's doing great as usual. Her first birthday is in 10 days!! I need to figure out something to do for it. And I also want to schedule her a one-year wellness exam at the vet and have blood work done to make sure all is good. She's been on a completely raw diet for about two months now. I thought it was longer, forgot how long it took to get her switched over! Haven't noticed any issues, but would be nice to see what they think as well.

*Pancake*: Here's the really good news!! I got her bloodwork results on Monday and... *drumroll* Her liver enzyme values are all back to normal ranges!!!  The only thing the vet said was slightly off was her albumin (a protein) level was slightly low. But not much, he wasn't overly concerned, just noticed it because that protein is made by the liver. So it could be a sign of the liver damage & could be a longer-term issue, but for now we're good. Said that if I want, I can give her egg whites, which are high in albumin, so I may make some scrambled eggs up for both the girls (and the hermit crabs) this weekend. And more good news - She's completely switched over to the Nutro wet food that we discovered she likes!! I'm still not a huge fan of the brand, and I'm hoping she'll switch to something better quality eventually, but I'm just so relieved she's on something that's balanced and that I don't have to make in the blender.  She's eating like a champ - 30g of the wet food a night, plus 5-6 roaches, 4-5 mealworm pupae, and she also got several mealworms and a cube of salmon grind tonight.

*Ebony*: She's on antibiotics now, and starting to eat better again, which is a huge relief. And I'm happy because I've started mixing the Orijen dry food in with her Purina One and she's eating the mixture pretty happily! So I'm hopeful that she'll switch all the way over down the line. I'm also starting to consider getting raw grinds from Hare Today for her to start supplementing her diet & see if she'll eat them. I need to order more for Bindi anyway, and there's a 10-lb minimum for ordering.

*Charis*: Not much to say here. She's still being a butt & not eating. :roll: My reptile-expert coworker from work suggested offering once a month for now while she's being so picky, and/or waiting until I have the new vivs and move her over to see if that sparks her appetite. I'm taking her out & cleaning her tank this weekend too, so I might try offering once more after that, then wait until she's in the new viv.

*Hermit crabs*: Aaaaand the sad news here. I did end up losing the little shell-less crab.  Still not really sure what was going on. Unfortunately sometimes their previous poor conditions catch up with them eventually, even after they've been in good conditions for a bit, and the built-up stress kills them. Just weird because everyone had seemed good for so long after they came home. The four left in the tank look and act fine, at least. Since everyone's above ground, I'm hoping to take them all out this weekend & give the substrate a good stirring and check the consistency.


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## Lilysmommy

I wanted to share some of the pictures I took this past weekend after cleaning the crab & snake tanks.

New crab tank set up:




























I kept some of the same things - their leaf/flower bowl, the moss pit, shell shops, grape wood, & rope bridge. Took out their homemade fake mangrove tree, wood log, and the aquarium shelf thing, and put in a modified double layer dish shelf (on the right side), a couple other fake plants to replace the fishnets as pool ladders, a chunk of red lava rock for climbing (you can see it in the second picture), and a little piece of drift wood (on the left side). I also put two pieces of bamboo underneath the large shell shop to help support it, so it's much more stable.

So far we're all pretty happy with the new set up!  I can get the water pools out pretty easily still, and there's a couple of open areas to set food dishes. Plus it's open underneath the double shelf, for space to dig. They're loving the double shelf, and I think they're enjoying having more room to walk around on the substrate as well. It was a little too cluttered for that before. I'm also really pleased because with only one of the heating pads on the back on, the tank has a really nice variation on temperature & humidity. The left side (with the moss pit, heat pad off) is around 79F & over 90% humidity. The right side, with the heat pad on, is around 84F and 82%. So I like that they can kind of control what they want for that as well. And I think the shell shop being more stable has been approved - the two big guys, Frodo & Shelob, have started shell shopping again. Shelob's changed shell once and Frodo's currently checking out a magpie shell.

And here's Charis in her new tank set up:










She seems to like it alright! She did a lot of exploring when I first put her in before heading back to her usual hide, the one in the middle. But when I went to get her out on Tuesday, I discovered she's taken a liking to the turtle shell hide!  I'm happy she's using it, she was completely ignoring it before the tank clean & rearrangement. Here's a cute picture of her from Tuesday's exploration time.










I meant to get her out again today, but I ended up spending an hour & a half organizing hedgehog food as I got two insect orders & the order of raw meat all today. I still need to put away the mealworms and I haven't even fed myself dinner yet. :roll: I was going to give Pancake a bath tonight as well, but I'm not sure I'm going to have time for the bath + cuddles until dry, so that may have to wait a couple days.

Speaking of Pancake...I made the discovery this week that she actually grooms her own feet!! Had the girls both out for cuddles and Pancake was curled up next to me and suddenly started chewing on a front paw. I blinked, started to get concerned, then realized what she was doing and grabbed my phone.




__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1036092023152879



I'm really pleased because I discovered last night that she actually likes a type of Wellness canned food even more than the Nutro wet food! Ate it right after her dubia roaches and licked the bowl clean before going near the Nutro. The protein is about 10% less than the Nutro on a DMB basis. The fat is still 22%, just barely less than the Nutro. But the ingredients are also better quality, so I'll take it. However, I may wait on switching her over because she's currently having diarrhea - her wheel is a horrendous mess. I need to try & get a poop sample that's fresh enough to take in to the vet and check for intestinal infections. She seems to be doing completely fine otherwise, though, and she's still eating really well, so at least there's that. She just has to keep me on my toes, I guess. :roll:


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## FinnickHog

The crab tank looks amazing! When can I move in!? I'm glad they're enjoying it so far. The variety in that shell shop is awesome.

That paper substrate looks so out of place in a snake cage :lol:. Has she tried making burrows with it? Viperkeeper on YouTube uses that kind of stuff with some of his desert-y snakes now, and they make really neat tunnels in it, but they're not as chunky as ball pythons are. She is such a cutie. She makes me want more ball pythons!

Pancake is adorable! Wow, that is amazing. She is so insanely cute! I just want to hug her and cuddle her and tell her how sweet she is! I'm so happy she's doing okay now. It was really rough for a while there, I was so worried about her. I think she's one of the cutest hedgies I've seen, cleaning her feet up all pretty like that!

I really hope the poop is nothing serious. It's time for her to be healthy now!


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## shinydistraction

So I was very pleased to see that video of Pancake cleaning her feet. Nico does the same thing, but she never lets me see! She does it on my lap while she's under her blanket, but if i move the blanket to see what on earth she's up to she stops. I never have to give her foot baths, so I know she cleans them herself, but I have never witnessed it. Now I know what it looks like by proxy! It's soo cute!


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## Lilysmommy

Thanks, Ashley! Heh, Shelob has been having fun shopping. She changed into a smaller shell once, then switched back. I don't think Frodo's bothered changing yet, but does enjoy looking. 

No burrows yet that I can see, but she's really enjoying hiding completely out of sight in her turtle shell hide. I don't think I've found her in her desert-y hide once since she took over the shell. She's coming out for explore time today, I think, if I have time in between cleaning. 

Heh, glad to give you a glimpse, Shiny!  Pancake is so freaking cute. And she keeps surprising me and making me smile. She just has so much personality! Stuff like the feet cleaning, and she loves to hide in my shirt, but if she's too hot, she just wants to stick her head in the shirt. :lol: She's also been under it before, on my tummy, and got too hot, so she stuck just her head out and stayed splatted that way. And she's gotten SO demanding about food the past couple weeks, which is so wonderful after so long of not eating well enough. She's usually up & waiting for me to feed them right around 8-9. :lol: If I'm later than that, she'll even start dragging her bowls around & making noise to tell me how mad she is that I'm late!

Oh, and I got to the vet on Friday - she has giardia. Picking up medication tomorrow & starting to add Bene-Bac to her food again tonight. I'm guessing she either just contracted it from how messy she is with her food & water, or she was already a carrier & it kicked up after everything else she's been dealing with. Hopefully we can get it backed down quickly with a round of meds. Once we get her poop back to normal, I'm hoping to finish switching her over to the Wellness canned food, then see how she's doing. 

And...today's big news (that will probably get a separate post later) - Bindi's first birthday is today!!!!  She's the youngest critter in this household and now officially an adult! I'm still trying to figure out how to celebrate. So far I'm planning to give her a pinky mouse with dinner tonight. Maybe I'll make up some scrambled eggs too! I'm also going to see if my roomie will pick up a mango when they leave work (they work at a grocery store) as that's her favorite fruit that I've found so far and I haven't had any for a few weeks now. (Though she did get banana last night for the first time & ate it up!)


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## FinnickHog

Oh Pancake, you're much too sweet for all these health problems! I hope she gets better quickly.

Happy Birthday Bindi! I can't believe it's already been a year!

How's Ebony doing now?


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## Lilysmommy

Good! She's eating her dry food regularly and still eating some wet food here & there. She's NOT a fan of the medicine, but I do think it's helping. We're still working on switching over to Orijen & she's doing well at eating the mix of foods. Hopefully will have her switched completely in the next week or two!


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## Lilysmommy

Okay, well, we didn't have much of a party, but I did get a great picture!! And it's the only decent one I got, as the birthday girl wasn't interested in a photoshoot. :lol:










I know I'm biased, but she's such a gorgeous girl. I can't believe she's already all grown up...what happened to the baby potato I brought home??


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## FinnickHog

She's so cute! Look at that little face! <3


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## Lilysmommy

I honestly love her coloring. The dark face mask + light quills is one of my favorite hedgie colorings & I didn't really think I'd end up with one like her. 

I stopped at the vet's today & got Pancake's meds. Metronidazole twice a day for 5 days. I also made an appointment for Bindi for July 8th, for her wellness exam & bloodwork. I'm going to take a list of her diet as well and see what the vet thinks! Little nervous, even though I'm comfortable with her diet & she seems to be doing fantastic. Hopefully the bloodwork & everything comes out well!


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## Lilysmommy

Pancake's been added on to Bindi's visit for next week. She's losing quills by the dozens, sigh. I treated her with Revolution, just in case, but I don't really think it's mites as she's not itching frantically. She scratches sometimes, but just in a "oh, itchy spot" way rather than "OH GOD SOMETHING'S BITING ME" way. So my guess is either infection or illness-caused stress, maybe. Either way, she's going in to get skin scraping done & tested, just in case. For now, my room is a freaking minefield, especially near her tote.

I'm not sure the medicine is helping with the poop much yet. She had a few fresh formed poops today when I got home, near her food bowls. I grabbed them with a paper towel & though they were in a normal shape, they were extremely gooey. :? Her wheel is still really awful too, it's soaking in the sink at the moment. Meds only go through Saturday night, so it seems like it'd be helping by now...we'll see, I guess. At least she's already going in next week anyway, so we can get more meds if we need to. I'm so ready to get this poor little girl back to ACTUAL good health. Sigh. I just don't know what else to do for her. I know it's just my brain being a jerk, but I keep feeling like I'm doing something wrong that she keeps having issues pop up. Even though logic tells me otherwise.

Oh, and a note on Ebony - my roomie & I have both observed in the past week or so that she has definitely put weight back on! We're both seriously relieved...she'd gotten SO skinny for a while there. She's eating the Orijen fish flavor pretty well now, I'm not adding much Purina One to the mix at all anymore. Think I may give just Orijen for the next bowlful and watch to make sure she's still eating enough.


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## FinnickHog

Oh Bindi, don't make me come down there! That poor little hedgehog. I hope it has an easy fix.

There's no way it's you're fault. I'm sure now that the main issue is starting to get under control all the little other stuff is popping up. I really hope this is the last of it and she has an easy time from here on out. I can't believe how much she's already been through.

Good news about Ebony! Tell her to keep it up!


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## Lilysmommy

Charis's turn to scare the mama. :roll:

I noticed a couple days ago that she was pre-shed, so started spraying down the tank as usual. It turns out I was a little later noticing than I thought! I went in to the room and glanced into her tank and found her out, which is unusual this early in the evening. Closer look revealed she was in the middle of ditching the old skin! First time I've actually gotten to see her doing this. She was already almost done, just getting the end of her tail out of it. While watching, I noticed one of her old burn scars had a very pink patch in the middle of it, and immediately started panicking. My mind went straight to skin infections. Much to her displeasure, I pulled her out so I could take a closer look, get some pictures, and check her over completely. 

While looking her over, I noticed that it seemed to be getting less pink over just those few minutes. I still took a couple pictures anyway, but panic started to subside as I figured it might just be what that scar looks like immediately after a shed, since it's the worst one and has an area with no scales. I checked with a friend on Facebook, who agrees that it's probably just how it looks immediately post-shed, and to keep an eye on it just to make sure it doesn't end up looking worse.

So Charis is back in bed, thoroughly grumpy with me. :lol: I'm still trying to calm down from the scare! On the plus side, yet another perfect shed.  I'm still relieved & pleased every time it happens, especially since I was late noticing the impending shed this time, and she's still on paper bedding, which isn't ideal (IMO).

Also now that she's done with the shed, I'm going to try thawing out a rat this weekend to offer & see if she's interested. Fingers crossed!

Oh, and thank you for your comments re: Pancake, Ashley.  Pancake's still got messy, gross poop and is still dropping quills like mad. *sigh* Vet appointment in just a few days. I'm using paper towels for her bedding right now to try & make it easier to clean her tote often. I'm cleaning every other day right now, and may switch to every day if the vet thinks it's necessary.


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## FinnickHog

I can't believe how many perfect sheds you've had in a row! Illidan always makes a huge mess of his. I'm glad she doesn't have an infection and that her scar is still doing okay. They don't have skin like we do so it can look pretty nasty when a wound is exposed, especially considering their skin basically liquefies every time they shed. Snakes are weird :lol:.

That hedgehog has been through so much. That poor girl. I feel awful for her. There isn't anything I can help with from here, is there?


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## Lilysmommy

...Huh. I didn't remember you asking that question, Ashley, and now I feel bad!  :lol: No, not much to do, but on the plus side, Pancake's kind of doing better! Poop looks mostly better, but we're still going bald. I need to treat her again with Revolution and actually note down the date - vet wants me to treat her twice more, two weeks apart. She thinks it's mites, though I'm still not entirely convinced. Hopefully it is and the Revolution will get rid of them so Pancake can stop being a walking quill bomb. I haven't been getting her out nearly as much as I'd like, and when I do get her out, I've been sticking her in a bag so I can limit where the quills fall. My roommate isn't impressed when they find one. :lol: 

Just came to this post to say that I think I'm going to take a short hiatus from the forum. Nothing bad - I just need some time to focus on brain stuff and getting things in order for myself. I just didn't want anyone to worry about a sudden disappearance! I will try to answer PMs if I have a chance, but I've been bad at that lately too, so I can't promise. I don't know how long I'll stay off, but I'm pretty bad at staying away for long!


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## twobytwopets

Kelsey, you need to take care of you. All the stuff here can wait until you are ready to deal with it. Try and not only get things sorted out but enjoy some things. GO RIDE A HORSE!!!!


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## FinnickHog

No worries! It doesn't help that I post at the strangest times :lol:.

Feel better! If you need anything while you're gone PM me, or I think you have my email address so that's fair game too!


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## Gldgood

I only have one with of my daughter and one of the hedgehogs.


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## Lilysmommy

Hey guys. 

Not really back yet, but wanted to at least post something to update on how we're doing over here.

Hedgies - Both are great. Pancake's been slowly but surely gaining weight, so I need to do some research to find a wet food with lower fat to try & switch her to. That should be interesting...hopefully she's voracious enough now to be less picky. Bindi's the same as always. Ashley mentioned a new food that Finn loves, by Repashy, so I might try getting some of that & if Bindi likes it, try mixing her veggies into it. She doesn't eat them very well, and I'd feel better if she ate a little more of them.

Charis - She FINALLY broke her eating strike! It lasted 4-5 months, I think. She took a rat last Tuesday, and shed the same night as well. So I'm very pleased and relieved about that. Hopefully she'll keep it up.

Ebony - She's back on the dry food she was getting at the rescue, Purina One. I was trying to mix Orijen into it, but anytime the mix started leaning towards Orijen as the majority, she'd vomit occasionally. Don't know if it's the flavor or brand & haven't decided if I want to try the chicken flavor bag I still have. Might just try ordering a different brand to try out. I'm still hoping to get her switched to canned (and eventually raw), but she's such a grazer that it's hard to give her canned without it drying out & getting gross. We're also having a major issue with gnats in the apartment (UGH), so she's not getting canned much right now because they swarm the food as soon as she leaves it. 

Hermit crabs - The two small ones are back up. Shelob & Frodo are both underground. I'm pretty sure Frodo's molting, so no clue when he'll be back up. I'm not sure if Shelob actually went down to molt as well, or if she's just chilling under there. If she's molting, I probably won't see her back up for quite a while! At least the little ones can keep me company.

Me - I'm...doing somewhat better. Antidepressants have helped cut anxiety down almost completely. It's a huge relief! I have some other things going on though & I'm in the process of trying to pursue some assessments & such, so I don't know how long that'll take. It's still kind of taking a toll on my ability to handle life in general, so I don't think I'm going to be back on the forum regularly yet. Still want to work on getting things more settled around the apartment & get myself caught up on Adulting things like doctor appointments, vet check ups and whatnot. But just wanted to let you guys know that I'm doing okay & I do miss the forums! Hopefully I'll get things together and can be back soon. Hope everyone on here is doing good.


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## Artemis-Ichiro

I'm so happy to hear from you! I'm so glad you are doing better and putting your life together again. You have been missed and hope everything goes back to normal so you can be very happy and we can see you around more often!


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## Lilysmommy

Hey everyone!  I think I'm finally back in here for good. Still stressed over a couple of life situations & have a few more things to do, but have made a lot of progress and I'm doing a lot better. Medication = best. Anxiety and depression are both much more under control now, which is a huge relief. I've also done some research & learned a couple other things about myself, which is helping with life management. So all in all...things are a lot better! I've missed you guys a lot, but I'm glad I took a break. Now just have to get back in the habit of checking in here more often!

And some animal updates, with pictures!

Ebony is great, as usual. She's honestly a perfect, if weird, cat. We call her dogcat because she greets us at the door, talks to us frequently, will often come when called, and likes to chase toys when they're thrown for her. She uses all of her toys, beds, and furniture, which makes me SO happy. My one issue with her is she's a freaking kibble addict. :roll: I'm still trying to get her to eat more wet food, and want to switch her to raw eventually, but it's gonna be a long road. She's a total lovebug, and I love it. She's cuddled up next to me as I type this.



Hermit crabs - also great! I currently have 8; 6 are in the 55g tank, and 2 in a temporary tank. I got 2 new ones from someone from a crab group who lost her house to a fire.  She didn't have a good way to take care of her crabbies, so I offered to adopt them. They're in the main tank & have settled in really well.

Here's the female, checking out a second new shell after her first change. I named her Arwen. Frodo's on the right.



Here's the male, who's a gorgeous bright red color! I named him Gandalf.



The two in the temporary tank are from a Craigslist ad - one bigger one and one teeny baby. Paid $20 for them, but it was worth it - they were in a small tank with rocks instead of substrate, handled daily, etc.

They've been named Galadriel (the big one, I can tell she's female), and Kili (the baby, who's too small to sex).



They're in a temporary tank because I got a new HUGE 150g tank for all of the crabs and wanted to get that set up before moving everyone in. There's a bit of a hiccup with that, as explained below in Charis's section...but here's a picture of the new mansion after I got it put in place.



So Charis is totally perfect! She just went to the vet yesterday and checked out totally fine. She got lots of compliments as well, on how gorgeous she is. Unfortunately, my apartment complex has decided reptiles are banned, with no reason, and no grandfather clause. This was decided January of this year...and they didn't tell us until a few weeks ago, just before lease renewal.  NOT impressed. So Charis is going to have to go stay with my friend or my coworker for a while. We can't handle a move on such short notice, so we signed for a month-by-month lease for next year. That'll give us time to look around, find someplace better that's affordable, and organize moving in a hopefully somewhat less stressful way. I'm still really upset by the idea of not having Charis around for a while, but this will be a better method of handling the situation. Obviously, rehoming is NOT an option for me. I really, really, really hate the idea of moving, just after getting animal enclosures set up, getting the new crab tank, I just got a new bed, etc. But I won't give up one of my babies, and I don't like the risk involved with hiding her.

Here's a pic from a while ago when I found her randomly taking a bath in her water bowl.



She decided to take over my laptop during a recent exploring session. Right after this picture she knocked it over, then got removed & went to pout in the corner of the couch. :lol:



I cleaned & rearranged her current 40g tank last night after we were done at the vet. She seemed to have fun checking it out for a bit before curling up on her turtle dome under her lamp. She's curled up inside the turtle dome today, sleeping.



And this is the new enclosure. 4 feet long, 2 feet wide, 3 feet tall. If she goes to my friend's house, she'll be able to stay in this and I may set it up with a basic bio-active set up. But unfortunately all of my fancy bio plans will have to wait until we're settled again.



Likewise, that's the issue I'm having with the big crab tank now. I can't decide if I want to bother setting it up if we're just going to move in 5-6 months. I think I'm leaning towards just setting it up & moving everyone in, let them molt if they're going to & hopefully come back up before we move. Bonuses to that include getting rid of the 55g tank so I don't have to move that, and having everything I need to set up the big tank so it'll be easier to set up at the new place. That would probably cut down on the stress of moving somewhat.

Okay, finally the hedgehogs!!! I'm going to do an update on Bindi's diet over on her raw diet thread, so not too much about that here.

Pancake - She's doing SO great!!!  We finally seem to be in a good health stretch for everyone, which is wonderful. She's back to being a bit chubby due to the wet food she was on. It was higher fat, which was okay while she needed to regain weight from being sick, but she did that pretty quickly. I've switched her to a wet Wellness dog food for small dogs. She really likes it, cleans her bowl every night, and it's only 11% fat DMB. I've also been adding small amounts of all of Bindi's foods each night - she gets a couple of each of the insects (except waxworms, which she doesn't like anyway), a small amount of mixed veggies, and some of the fruit. I've recently started adding a cube of the meat grinds too, which she seems to like. She won't be raw fed anytime soon - she won't eat a wide enough range of insects to suit me, and she mostly only eats the veggies because they're all mixed up with the canned food. But I'm pretty happy with the progress she's made!! She was at the vet Friday for a check up & got a clean bill of health. She's 540g and would be better around 500g, so hopefully the new food will help with that, as she's only been on it totally for a few weeks. She had bloodwork done to check her liver values - only one thing was a little elevated & the vet said it wasn't a concern.

It's honestly so nice to see the difference in this hedgehog now that she's healthy and at a (mostly) healthy weight. She's very active now - she's up & waiting when I take their food in most nights. I made a rock garden for her to search for mealworms in, which she LOVES. She immediately goes to it as soon as I put it in and digs & roots around with her front paws and her nose. She'll dig around in it a few more times throughout the night to make sure she's gotten them all. She runs on her wheel a ton, and she loves to explore when I get her out now. However, I discovered the secret to getting her to chill & cuddle with me - she adores the cuddle sling I made for Lily! Passes out as soon as I put her in it, and it's adorable.



Bindi is also doing great!! Eats, wheels, poops, everything totally normal. She also checked out great at the vet and had bloodwork done as well. She's been on her raw diet for about 7 months now and is still doing wonderful. More about that in her raw diet thread next - http://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/12-diet-nutrition/128865-bindi-s-raw-diet-6.html I don't know if it's a Bindi thing or due to her raw diet, but man her weight has been rock steady. She was 461g at the vet on Friday. She was 462 on her last visit in July, and I'm pretty sure she's been around 460 since at least spring! She's the easiest hedgehog, I swear. And she's still a total cuddlebug, happy as long as her head is covered.



The hedgehogs also have new enclosures. They're the same as Charis's except made with screen for the doors instead of plexiglass, and they also have two 12" screen circles on top for lamps if needed.



Bindi's on the bottom. I'll need to get a picture later to post, but she now has a pvc pipe + wire shelf lamp holder in the middle of her enclosure as it wasn't staying quite warm enough. I have a 12" lamp with a 100w CHE in it and that seems to be doing the trick. Nothing for Pancake's enclosure as it's higher up & also gets the heat rising from Bindi's lamp. I still have my space heater for my room, but don't bother keeping it quite as high. Oh, and they also have LED lights mounted at the front top of each enclosure now, so I'll have to try & get a picture of that sometime too. I really like them - they have two settings, so I keep them on the dimmer one for the hedgehogs, and can switch them to the brighter one while cleaning.



Bindi was largely unimpressed until she found her bed, then immediately went in to sleep. :lol: Girl doesn't like to do anything unless it's dark!



And here's Pancake's. The fake plant has been replaced by her rock garden, which is a clay planter dish with small black river stones.



Pancake took a few minutes to wander about & check everything out, then found her food & decided it must be a good place as long as food was there.



I used all of the old wire pieces from Bindi's old C&C cage to make a 2x4 shelf for holding hedgie supplies. There's now a paper towel holder mounted on the side for easy grabbing while cleaning enclosures.



One more picture, but I've hit the limit so I have to put it in a new post! :roll:


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## shinydistraction

Welcome back!!!!! You've been missed!

I'm glad to hear that the whole family is doing well. It sucks the apartment made such a silly change and sprang it on you with basically no notice. Hopefully you'll find the perfect place to settle in and get Charis back home asap.


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## Lilysmommy

Not much of an update as I'm low on energy today & there hasn't been much going on here. Today's the anniversary of losing my mom 6 years ago, so it's a hard week for me, which means low/no motivation to do anything. Trying to do the basic upkeep for the animals, at least, aside from taking care of myself.

Yesterday was Bindi's first "gotcha day", when I brought her home.  It made me smile to see her homecoming picture come up in my Facebook memories. I swear she posed!



I got her out for some solo snuggles with mama to celebrate, which was really nice. She's such a sweet snuggly girl.



Unrelated, but I'm just constantly so happy about how well Pancake is doing now. She eats so well, though she doesn't eat as many bugs as I'd like. But she likes all of Bindi's raw meat grinds (she gets one cube a night of whatever Bindi's getting), and she eats all of the fruit as well. She's also getting better about eating the veggie chop that I mix in with her wet food, I'm finding less of it smeared on her place mat. :lol: If only I could get her to eat more bugs...I would feel more comfortable trying her on a raw diet then. But she only reliably eats mealworms, mw pupae & beetles, dubia roaches, silkworms, maggots, and superworms. Won't touch snails, grasshoppers, silkworm pupae, crickets, or hornworms. While it's still a great variety, it's not quite enough to make me comfortable trying it just yet. Though I'm starting to consider the possibility of doing a homemade food mix for her, similar to what Ashley makes for Finn...we'll see. She's good about picking out even small chunks of whatever she doesn't want (even when I tried cutting a grasshopper up into four pieces...sigh), so I don't know if even that would work!

However, I wanted to share a picture of her wheel because I'm just so happy about the progress with her poop. Weird, I know. :lol: Other hedgie owners are the only ones who'd understand this! When she was on her old Wellness cat wet food, her poop was SO messy. Her wheel would have to be cleaned regularly, every night or every other. I know, goes with the territory for messy hedgies.

The dog food that she's been switched to has the same fiber content as the cat food, which I had to look up (I was starting to wonder if it was higher) - 5% DMB for both. So I really think it was the veggies & insects that have made a difference! Her poops are a lot firmer & less messy. This is her wheel tonight - it's been a week & a half since I last washed it. Bindi's is the same way!



So y'know, won't kill them if they won't eat insects....but man, I think it makes a difference with the poop!!


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## Lilysmommy

My crabby crew gained two new siblings today! My group is up to 10 crabs now. I brought Rosie and Luthien home, adopted from someone on one of my crab Facebook groups. They came with a ton of actually useful supplies, which was really nice! They joined the rest of the big ones in the 55g tank for now. The teeny baby Kili is still alone in the iso tank for now. I'm going to have the big 150g tank ready in the next couple weeks, I think - Should be able to silicone some things in by this weekend, then a week to cure before I start mixing substrate & adding in decor. So everyone should be moved into the new mansion by the end of January (except for a couple that are burrowed), and I'll have lots of pictures to share!! I may do a separate post to show pictures of the tank build & final result.

Here's Luthien:



And this is Rosie, who already changed into a new shell as she was wearing a heavy murex shell:



Little bit of antennae fighting & sitting on each other between the new girls & the old crew, but so far nothing too serious. I've separated Rosie from other crabs a couple times just in case things started to escalate otherwise, but everyone seems to be settling down now.


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## FinnickHog

They're so cute! I'm glad they're mostly getting along, too!


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## Lilysmommy

I have a fun update today!!! A couple notes about the hog girls first - yesterday was Pancake's gotcha day for coming to Jack's rescue, which we've also designated as her birthday (since we don't know it). So happy 3rd birthday to Pancake!  I didn't realize it until this morning when I checked my FB memories, so she's getting extra treats tonight along with a nice solo snuggle session. And with Bindi, the vet wanted to do a fecal test on her, due to her raw diet. The results on that came back clear today, so that's good news! I figured it'd be the case as almost all of her food is frozen (or cooked in a can) before she gets it, but good to be sure.

I had a super busy weekend as I finally got the 150g tank set up for the hermit crabs!  I'm happy to have it done & I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! It took 600lbs of sand, 8 bricks of Eco Earth, and about 2.5 days of on/off work. I was exhausted at the end of each night, but it was worth it. 8/10 crabs have been moved over - 2 are buried in the 55g, so I'm waiting on them to come up so they can join the rest of the crew. Here's some pictures!

Left side of tank - fresh water pool, three of the shell shops, a hanging coconut moss pit, and a bunch of bridges for climbing on! The light on this side is just a regular LED bulb.



Middle of the tank - an aquarium shelf decoration in the back, fake plant in the front, and a mopani log in the middle.



Right side of the tank - Another aquarium fake tree climbing structure on the left side of the picture, some fake plants behind that, a little fake half log hide next to those, shell shop in the front, their flower/leaf dish planter, another moss pit, and their salt water pool. The light on this side is a Reptisun 5.0 UVB.



So far they seem to be settling in well! The baby disappeared shortly after I put them in, but it's hard to tell whether they actually burrowed or I just can't find them in the massive tank. :lol: I can't wait to get the 55g tank out of the way so I can take better pictures of the whole thing. I also have more shells coming in a couple days - I measured all of my extra shells as I was moving them, so I could get an inventory, then measured each crab's shell as I pulled them out (much to their displeasure). I have so many big guys now, and very few bigger shells. So I went looking to see what my favorite site, Naples Seashell Company, had in stock. I got lucky & discovered they had listings for shells with openings of 1 3/8", 1 1/2", and 1 5/8". I've read that this size range is really hard to find most of the time & don't have any yet as I couldn't find them before. So I HAD to order...right? :lol: I'll probably post a pic when I get them, I'm excited! Gotta make sure the big babies have plenty of options so there are no fights.

And then to end the busy weekend, Charis moved to Jack's & into her new enclosure last night. I'm still upset & a bit off-kilter not having her with me. Her tank looks WRONG with the light off.  But I know this is the best situation for now, and Jack will keep a close eye on her for me. And I'll get to see her once a week & more if I want.

I'm waiting to see what some reptile blogs I admire on Tumblr think of her enclosure, but I think I'm pretty happy with it so far. She has two hides, and lots of cover, plus some climbing opportunities. The substrate is bio-active, a mix of organic topsoil, playsand with a couple store-bought beddings & sphagnum moss for texture. Her clean up crew for now is red wiggler worms & isopods, I'm going to order some springtails soon as well. She has a double light fixture with one 6.5k daylight bulb & a 6% Arcadia UVB bulb, and her heat is an 80w radiant heat panel. Everything seemed to be working well when I left last night & all of her levels were pretty spot on. Jack's going to check when he gets home from work to make sure they're staying relatively steady. I don't have a good hot spot for her yet, but I'm planning to make a basking platform with a slate tile, to set up above her turtle shell hide. The tile should absorb the heat from the panel well, giving her belly heat + some above heat from the panel (similar to the sun). She was never shy about basking on top of her turtle shell in my room, and the room she's in is pretty quiet & doesn't get much traffic, so I hope she'll be fine with the set up. Obviously if she's not, I'll figure something else out! Anyway, shutting up and here's some pictures of Charis & her new home.  She just shed last week, so she's still really shiny & soft!!


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## FinnickHog

Everything looks so good! The crab tank is amazing! 

I'm still so sad that Charis had to move out, but her new cage looks great. She'll definitely be happy there!


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## Lilysmommy

Thanks!  

I'm still really upset too. It's been really hard going into my room because I keep wanting to check her tank out of habit, but there's no one in there. It keeps giving me a jolt to not see the light on either. I've been trying not to harass Jack too much, but he understands. I got a couple readings on her humidity & temp today - it seems that the cool side temp dips down a tad to 77-78F at night when the light is off (or perhaps when the thermostat has the heat panel off, haven't figured out which yet) & is at 80-81 otherwise. I'm pretty happy with that range, regardless of which scenario is causing it. If it's a nighttime dip, that pretty much emulates natural conditions anyway, and if it's just fluctuation from the panel, that's still within the right range & not a huge difference. I'm so impatient to go out & visit her this weekend!!

Oh, and I posted the enclosure pictures on Tumblr, to get the opinion of a couple snake blogs I really admire on there too. One of them replied & gave me some great advice on how to use more of the vertical space for her & a great way to set up a basking area for her, so I'll be hopefully doing that this weekend or next. I'll probably post updated pics once it's done!


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## Lilysmommy

Got the new crab shells today! I'm really happy with them. Only one is a little bigger than the ordered opening size, which is okay. Planning to have them boiled & added to the tank by this weekend to see if anyone takes an interest!


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## Lilysmommy

Pancake had a quick trip to the vet today as two out of the past five days, she's had a bubbly wet nose. It kept coming & going, but made me nervous enough that I called yesterday & they squeezed me in. The vet couldn't hear anything, so we're holding off on antibiotics for now, which I'll take as good news! She said I could email/call anytime this week if Pancake seems to get worse again & we can start antibiotics if I want.

We took a selfie while we waited for the vet:










She acted nothing like a hedgehog, as usual. :lol: Didn't fuss at all about the stethescope, then started licking the vet's wrist & anointed, making her giggle. She's such a good weird dog-hedge. ♥


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## Lilysmommy

Pancake went to the spa tonight, to get gunk off her visor quills & trim her nails. She's very unhappy, but content enough to splat out on my chest in her towel now. :lol: My weird sweet girl.


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## Lilysmommy

I'm going to be gone off the forum again for a short while - probably only a week or so, but we'll see. the past two weeks have been awful - found the remains of one dead crab in the tank, no clue what happened. got into a minor car crash, I'm physically fine, but it was my first, I had a massive panic attack, and I'm still not entirely handling it well. going to be traveling for a short bit soon here and that's not helping mental health much. Aaaaaaaand to top it all off I just found a crab nearly drowned in their fresh water pool, no clue why the fake plant ladder was out of the pool and I'm extremely upset at myself. have him set up with all I can do for him, but don't know if he'll make it. I'll try to be back in a week or so if things are better.


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## MusicalHedgie921

What color is you CUTE hedgie??? Mine has the same coloring and I can't find what it's called. Groovy snake, too!!!


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## FinnickHog

Awwww. I'm sending you massive internet hugs! I'm so glad you're okay! I hope your car is okay too. Those silly crabbies need to stop stressing their mom out . Feel better! You know how to find me if you need anything at all!


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## Artemis-Ichiro

All that sucks. Take your time and focus on yourself so you can heal and you also know where to find me if you need anything.


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## Lilysmommy

Didn't realize how long I left this thread without any updates! Anyway, cleaned the girls' cages today & thought I'd post some pictures of what they look like right now. 



















Pancake is the first one, on top, and Bindi is the second, on bottom. They get treats (frozen dubia roaches & superworms) hidden in the fake aquarium plants/decor, the ceramic frog in Bindi's cage, and under cardboard egg carton sections. They each have a puzzle toy as well.

Bindi likes both toys MUCH more than Pancake! She used to have the orange/blue one & 
never had a problem with it, once she figured out the doors. I've been using the disk attachment for her current toy (the square one), which was no problem. Switched to the blue caps shown in the picture for tonight, can't wait to see how she does with it!

Pancake is either lazy or not smart. :lol: I put the superworms hanging half out of the doors for the toy she has & she'll grab them most of the time. But if she knocks them back under the door, she won't get them out. No clue what she's thinking!


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