When I made the original post about firefly poisoning it was in relationship to an incident I had with my male beardie that happened about two weeks ago. Since giving him the anecdote, he has been fine and yesterday he was looking so wonderful I even took him out to photograph him –hence his handsome face dones my avatar.
Last night after dinner, I went out to give the two beardies a few blueberries for a treat. I have a top opening cage on my deck so on opening it and the female was already there waiting for the treat. I was feeding her her third berry when the male lunge from out under the greenery—I thought he was just anxious for his fair share, but when I looked down I could see he was (what appeared to be stuck and thrashing wildly). At first, I thought he must have gotten a foot stuck in the cage wire or under a rock but in clearing the way I saw he was actually in full blown convulsions. His beard, all the way around his neck and up across his ears was ebony – I’m talking as black as anything can get on this planet, and the last five inches of his tail was dark, dark brown. He was simultaneously retching and trying to evacuate his bowels – violently. I had to assume it was poisoning again. I grabbed him and held him stable to my chest as I ran in the house and worked to put together the anecdote. I made up a 3ml syringe (no needle tip- just plastic delivery tube) of CharcoAid-G. I followed that with about 5ml of bottled water. Honestly I gave him the water because in my haste to mix up the charcoal I thought I might have used too much. Also, at this point I felt it was a done deal and I was just going through the motions. I could not see him living through what I was witnessing. Still…I continued to work with all haste; I wrapped him in a towel and lay him on the counter as I worked to make a juice of cilantro and parsley. Then I gave him 6mil of that (two full syringes) of that bright green concoction. He was still retching horribly, so it wasn’t difficult to get the liquid into him. I held up upright against my chest so as to use gravity to let it drip down into his stomach.
I put him in his indoor cage (leaving the female outside) and I kept an eye on him. He twitched and writhed wildly off and on for about an hour. Then, he went into a full-blown death throw. He flipped on his back and convulsed uncontrolably—then he was still and the end of his tongue was sticking out. Everyone gathered around and we said our goodbyes. I wrapped his body in a towel and took him outside to bury him. I sat outside for a little while—deciding to wait until he had that sunken-eye look of death. I could not see any breathing motion, but his eyes didn’t look dead yet. I have a kiddy pool on my deck which I keep filled with fresh water that I use by the bucket full to water all my deck plants. I took him to the pool and put his limp body in it – holding his head out of the water. I massaged his stomach…hoping to physically move the poison out. Then…under the water, I thought I could still feel a faint heart beat. He twitched. I kept massaging. This went on for about 10 or 15 minutes. He did a small poop into the pool. That was the first real poop he had had in all these convulsive movements (which actually surprised me) of course, animals dying always poop – so it was expected. I just thought there should have been more. I wondered if he had some impaction going on too. That said—he did the poop and he seemed somewhat more alive afterwards. I wrapped him in a towel. He periodically convulsed again arching his back as if in pain. I just held him immobile and carried him to the couch where I laid with him on my chest, gently holding him through the convulsive movements. My slightest movement would make him arch wildly so I lay perfectly still letting him rest upon my on breathing chest for a couple of hours. I didn’t want to put him into his cage until I was sure he was through convulsing as the last time he convulsed so badly he picked up substrate particles on his eyeballs, lips and tongue.
When he was perfectly void of convulsive movements for quite some time, I took him—still wrapped in the small towel and placed him in his indoor cage on the warm spot. Every hour or so, I’d check him using a flashlight. I noticed his eyes were looking more alert, although he was splayed out, unmoving from the position I had left him in. This morning I came down and he looks ---are you guys READY??? Absolutely fine. Bloody normal! All the color is back to normal, his strength is back. I took him out and put him back in the cage with the female. I have NEVER in all my days of keeping animals (and we’re talking 45+years) seen an animal go through death-throws and recover. I have to think it was the charcoal and the parsley/cilantro juice. The charcoAid-G is specifically designed with a surface area conducive to picking up poison from the body. The parsley and cilantro are plants well known for chelating toxins out of the organs. What I don’t get is how he ate two fireflies—and I’m just guessing that’s what happened. There have been a lot of them around and what else could have poisoned him like this? We do have some box elder bugs, which I understand are equally as poisonous to dragons…maybe it was a box elder (or a spider of some sort) this time. Either way, this combination of anecdotes brought my Quagmire back literally from the edge of death. I am blown away. I guess I'm going to have to break down and put netting over my cage. I've had these animals on the deck for summers for (ten years for the female - 5 for Quagmire) with no problem before. What else could have caused something such as this? Any ideas?
