Mufasa and Norberta

Goodness Squirmless!! :lol: That is so funny, I haven't noticed Olympia get crazy with the different seasons but I've only had her for a little over a year. And thanks for the reminder about placing the heat panel! The one I got goes on the ceiling and I've been keeping an eye on her to make sure she isn't doing anything stupid, so far so good lol.
Aww Puff, that's good the UVB light across his tub helps when he's eating! And ooohhh yeah, Mufasa is great at communicating like that :roll:

So Mufasa is still out lol, she turned around one day and stuck her head out for a little bit but is back to only the tip of her tail in sight.
Norberta has been trying to brumate too which scares be just because of her issues, and I talked with Tracie the other day and she says to let her sleep all but a few hours each day so she can get her meds and warm up, then to let her go back to sleep if she wants. Which she has, lol.
It's going to be a sad winter with both of them sleeping.

I could be wrong, but I think going crazy in the spring is more of a male snake thing than a female snake thing in most species. I've also heard that females can sometimes lay infertile eggs even if they haven't mated, and then you have to deal with making sure that they get enough food and calcium to recover after they're done. If it isn't one thing it's another... :roll:

Both of our reptiles are male, so we've never had to worry about the egg thing.

Chances are that your beardies probably won't sleep all winter -- most of them only do it for a couple of months, but they're all different. And sometimes it's really hard to figure out when it's best to just let them sleep and when to intervene. :?

Well Nathaniel, who has been up for almost a month, decided to get back into his hide again...sigh...he did poop yesterday but even so, he's had his 3 1/2 mo of sleep. If he wants to be in his hide for the day, I'm not going to complain, I'll get him up tomorrow instead. Lights are staying on just to let him know his brumation days are done for this year LOL

Gabriel is still going strong and Imp actually sat beside him on the ramp and help his hand

They stayed like that for a little while, was watching the whole time. Imp is starting to not look as skinny, so that's good. Feeding him every 2nd day is working.

Only other news is Eric caught Tara doing Fraud. The Child Tax Credit that Eric has been applying for since last March, he found out she's been getting it all along. She lied to them and told them she had 1 child and Eric had the other. He was livid :evil: He called the office Monday morning and reported her, now we have two letters, one from our chiro and one from his girlfriend that we'll get in this weekend, so complete his claim and we're praying that it goes through and he finally gets some $. I was speechless when I heard what Tara has done, that is pure fraud and they're opening an investigation. He found out because she called him at her parents when he was picking up the kids this past Sunday and was bragging that she had rented a 2 bedroom 1 den apartment and when he asked how she got the $, she told him. She also begged him not to continue with court as she didn't want to go to jail. He told her tough, he was going through the request for child support from her and full legal custody of the kids, whether she liked it or not. She's in a world of trouble. You don't fraud the government!

On other news, dragons are fine, Bella is making noise that it's time to get up and walk her and I'm taking a pain killer every morning so I can stay at work, so far it's working! Hope it works for the next 3 years so I get my pensions when I retire.

SHBailey Yeah that would make sense, I hadn't heard of snakes laying infertile eggs! I've read about slugs when breeding them but huh, that's interesting. And yeah that must be nice lol, I'm really hoping the beardies wont lay eggs, but they like to keep me on my toes so they probably will eventually. Yeah it is. :/

Hopefully Nathaniel will get up for you Deb! He's slept long enough lol. I'm so glad to hear about Gabriel, that picture of him and Imp is cute, and Imp is looking much more filled out! Oh my goodness, I hope Eric can get all that settled out soon, poor guy. I'm glad to hear the pain killers are helping you!

Not much to report here, the girls are sleeping away, though I heard Mufasa scratching around last night. I doubt she's coming out though lol.
I set up new tanks for Olympia and Rose (the hermit crab) in the past two weeks, and I think everything is mostly working for them both! I need to get a heat mat for Rose still and a few other things but then we have all the necessities.
Norberta out the other day getting her meds.

I'm glad you think Imp is getting wider, that's the plan with all this forced feeding. I'm going to try to feed him again today.

I'm glad you're getting all your tanks sorted for Olympia and your hermit crab. Anything to make them more comfy, right?

Aww,Norberta, glad she was up for her meds. Cierra and Castiel are still snoozing away, they get up next Saturday for baths but after being up and big and walking around the living room some, after baths and basking for awhile, they're both right back in their tanks. Cierra never wakes up before February and I have to remove her hide. Ciastiel, probably in Jan, hard to tell. He'll get up a big in Dec, then back to sleep, so I make sure I don't feed him. Will be alot busier once they're up.

My cresties are all doing well, but not too keen on being held too long. Selene continues to run when I approach their tank, but Camilla will let me hold her a bit and Bunny just loves to have her back rubbed, but not too keen (after 8 years with me) to be held. She just wants to jump away LOL Bunny will be 13 years old this December, not even sure how long they live, I've been told 20-30 years! Camilla and Selene must be about 3-4 years old now, not sure, they were full grown when I got then in 2016.

Otherwise, work, walk Bella, dragons, cresties at night, grandkds, helping Eric with his application for child tax, only 2 letters need to be done now. They're over tomorrow, then I take them home and have the car until Sunday am, so can go over and wait for the kids to be picked up from their other grandparents and then spend time with them in the afternoon. Will put a bit more gas in tonight, our gas is now averaging between $518/gallon to $585/gallon. Way too expensive, so only $20 a time to maintain at least 1/2 tank. We don't use it much, Eric and I, and I'm sure glad of that.

The best knew, besides my eldest niece being pregnant and due Feb 3, is I found a cleaner, finally. I have alot of trouble vacuuming, washing floors and sweeping. The rest I can handle, but that hasn't been done for ages. My shoulders will ache for 4-5 days if I even attempt to do that. So the rest of the house is ok, but this woman I found at $25/hr will be coming in for 4 hours to do a complete clean. It will be wonderful to have a clean house again!

Your girls will get up by January, I'm sure, so I'll see if I'm right!

Love your Norberta's picture, she's so sweet. Musafa, too, but Norberta hold a piece of my heart because of what she's dealing with and so well, too.

I agree that Imp is looking really good. In fact, I can hardly tell the difference between him and Gabriel in that photo -- I'm guessing he's the one on the left? Either way, they both look good.

Cute picture of Norberta, too.

I had a friend who had a hermit crab, and I understand that even after you get their habitat all set up, you still have to find them a new shell every once in a while for when they outgrow their old one?

The fraud thing may be a blessing in disguise -- that should convince the courts once and for all that Eric is the one who should have full custody of the kids, as well as any $$ assistance that's available.

Okay, I guess we should quit complaining about our gas prices because it could be a lot worse, especially since we bought a plug-in hybrid car last year. Our old one got totaled in the parking lot at the grocery store last fall. It was 16 years old, and we were hoping to keep it running for a few more years, but no such luck. The new one can run exclusively on electricity in the summer, but when the temperature drops below freezing, it runs the gas engine to warm up. I don't think we're saving much $ though. What we save on gas, we spend on electric bills instead, so we also try to drive as little as possible. My husband walks to work most days. We're still trying to recover from the purchase of the new car -- it left a big hole in our savings. We both love it though -- especially my husband. Computers are his thing, and it's basically a computer with a car wrapped around it -- the perfect techie car. A little smaller than the old one though -- it's a tight squeeze with me and the reptiles in their carriers in the back seat when we take them both to the vet. My husband thinks it would be easier to put them in the hatchback but I insist on sitting next to them.

I'm dreading the possibility that we may have to bring a housekeeper in here someday, so I hope yours works out for you. We're both allergic to dust mites and our house is full of them. I know it's been too long since we've done the vacuuming when I start picking up dust bunnies off the floor with my bare hands and putting them in the trash. :roll: My husband even talked me into getting one of those robot vacuum cleaners, but we can't turn it loose and let it run unsupervised because we've got too much stuff sitting around the floor for it to get tangled up with -- too much stuff and not enough house. So we either have to rearrange everything before we turn it on or one of us has to chase it around and keep it out of trouble. And Puff sits in his tank and gives it funny looks -- the way it crawls around on the floor, I figure that he probably thinks it's a giant cockroach.

Nobody's brumating around here yet, even though the snow on the ground is probably here to stay for most of the rest of the season, but we're all a little sleepier than usual, even the humans. :wink:

Sorry I haven't replied, been pretty busy with work and Thanksgiving!
Deb yes indeed, they both seem to like their new tanks so far, not entirely done decoration wise but they have pretty much all the essentials. How's your crew doing atm? Your cresties all sound so sweet! That's amazing Bunny is so old! Congrats to your niece, and that's great to hear you found a cleaner!! Haha we will have to see when they get up, last year Mufasa didn't get up till early February. Aw thank you, she has been so patient with all her problems. I love them both so much.
SHBailey yup, you always need to make sure they have multiple options of shells on hand so that they can change whenever they need to or feel like it. It sounds like you and your husband have a nice car!

Not much to report about the beardies, I woke Mufasa up to weigh her last Wednesday and she stayed up for a day and hid again lol. Norberta is still sleeping too, but does good taking her meds. Rose (the crab) is now renamed Tyler after about five years, as I'm pretty sure she is a he LOL. Snake gets fed tonight, we'll see if she actually will eat it. She is the pickiest thing ever jeez :lol:

Awww, your girls, always full of surprises. Glad Norberta is good about her meds, or did I say that already?

Gabriel's aneurysm is getting bigger. I like him to walk across the ramp, but I put him on it as it's steep to climb the pillows. He mainly has his bright colours on, especially after bath time. Imp is doing well, I had to be out early today (lunch with my sister and my brother's daughters our two youngest nieces.) for my birthday and yesterday was out early to transit to my car to to go the chiro. Then my son, who I picked up on the way, walked my dog Bella while I did the little bit of shopping I needed for the week. I left my sis after she took me home after our lunch, then dropped me off at the skytrain and went to my brother's to make them all supper.

Your beardies and snake all look good.

Did you happen to see the latest episode of Nature? There was a segment about wild hermit crabs that line up with their shells from largest to smallest, and then when the largest one moves into a larger shell, the next largest one moves into his old shell, and on down the line to the smallest, although sometimes a bully takes cuts in line, and then the other crab (usually one of the smaller ones) has to go looking for another shell. But it was pretty amazing that they cooperate like that (at least most of them).

Happy birthday, Deb. Glad to hear that Gabriel still seems to be feeling well enough to have his happy colors, but I can't help wondering -- are they absolutely sure that's an aneurysm and not just some sort of a large benign fluid filled cyst? It just seems incredible that he's had it for so long (over a year now, isn't it?) and it hasn't ruptured yet and he still seems to be doing so well.

We just had one of our famous Alaskan earthquakes a little while ago -- only a 5.1 and the epicenter was a ways away, so just enough shaking to get me worried and hoping it wasn't going to get any worse before it stopped. No damage around here at least, and Puff didn't seem to notice, although I've seen him get startled by some of the other ones we've had. They don't seem to bother Squirmles, although I've heard that snakes are very good at sensing ground vibrations. I'm guessing it's because his tank is right across the hall from the washer-dryer, so he's probably learned that when the floor shakes it doesn't mean something bad is going to happen to him -- it's just mom doing the laundry. :wink:

Otherwise, It's a beautiful sunny day but COLD. I think they're expecting it to warm up and snow later in the week. That may sound like a contradiction, but that's the way it seems to go. This time of year it gets really cold when we lose our cloud blanket.

Gabriel had a fluid test when I first took him to the vet July/16. They determined, due to the makeup that it was a very thin, long aneurysm. They think it's a heart artery that had a weak wall and filled with blood. So far he's still functioning, even though he prefers to be on a slant, I think he finds it really heavy to lay on. I took him back to see my vet a couple of mo ago, she was a amazed to see him still alive and functioning, he even tried to stand upright on my vet's arm. She thought that was charming. He is a sweet dragon, that's for sure. I'm back in bed with no energy, so I'm not snuggling them as much as I should. I did get Castiel and Cierra up for their 1/2 hr soaks, they now both. I'll see if Castiel wants to get up, but Cierra is back sleeping. She normally sleeps from Aug-Feb, that's when there's a fight to sleep. I won't let her continue, 6 mo is long enough.

I saw my grandkids on Friday, felt a bit better. Leo went to the doc for a referral to a pediatritian. He wants his speech checked, as he's getting this consenents mixed up, he's hard to comprehend. I'm hoping they will find a speech therapist, that will help Leo. It helped Eric when he was young. He had an ear infection that came back every 2 weeks from 6 mo old to 1 1/2 yrs. Then it all stopped when he was done teething. Maybe it was to 2 years old. The result was hearing as if he was under water. He had 8 weeks of intense daily speech therapy when he was 4 1/2 yrs old and it helped him a great deal. Safara has a lazy eye, her right eye's pupil moves towards her nose. So getting referred to get that done, too. He's doing his best with his two kids.

I just need to get well, I don't seem to have any energy, again. I was feeling better by Friday, sait with Safara until Dad was back from the doctor, then saw chiro on Sat. By Sun I felt well enough to go out for lunch for my birthday. Now I'm back in bed resting. I'm waiting to see my doc before I take any more puffers until it's necessary.

I guess one good thing about having no energy is it gives you a nice excuse to lay around and cuddle with your beardies. I'm lucky that when I get tired and go to bed before reptile bedtime, my husband usually stays up and watches the time for me, and sometimes brings Puff in for his bedtime cuddle if I'm still awake enough, and then he keeps an eye on us and comes and gets Puff and tucks him in back in his tank after one or both of us falls asleep. I've noticed that Puff also seems more comfortable with his head tilted a little higher than the rest of his body, so he settles down more easily when I'm sitting up with him in a chair, but if I'm in bed lying down it works better if I prop his head up on my arm. It took us a while to figure that out because at first I thought it was the light coming in the window that was keeping him awake, but this time of year there's no more light coming in the window at bedtime -- we're now paying the piper for all the extra daylight we get in the summer. But I'm wondering if the preference to be slanted with their head a little higher than the rest of their body, or at least no lower, is a normal beardie thing. Puff goes to sleep easily on his basking platform too, and in that case he's pretty much level and horizontal.

I was hoping that maybe Gabriel's condition was not as serious as they thought after all, but it sounds like they're pretty sure.

I'm afraid that running out of energy may just be part of getting old, but I was never a high energy person even when I was younger. My husband is also trying to cope with being tired all the time, and recently said he thinks we need a new mattress because he wakes up stiff and sore half the time. I hated to tell him that there's nothing wrong with the mattress -- it's because we're both getting old. I'm 60 and he's 50, and I also told him the bad news is that if he's anything like me, it's only going to get worse -- in another 10 years he'll wake up stiff and sore all the time instead of half the time.

If I remember correctly, you're about the same age as me, so you're lucky if you've found that a chiropractor helps at all. :wink:

Not being able to hear properly can really mess up a child's ability to learn how to talk, so I hope they can get Leo's problem sorted out. I went through the "lazy eye" thing myself when I was around Safara's age too. They tried to correct it with surgery but the end result has been that my right eye is still weak. I can see well enough with glasses, but I've never had normal depth perception. I had a heck of a time learning how to drive, and even then I was never very good at it so I quit driving 7 years ago. Hopefully Safara will do better than I did -- they've probably developed better treatments now than what they had when I was a kid.

It's nice that you get to spend time with your family and your critters, even when you don't have a whole lot of energy. I guess we're both lucky that way.

I'm glad she takes her meds too lol, fighting her is no fun every day :lol: Happy belated birthday!! Sounds like you had a busy Sunday. I'm always praying for you and Gabriel.
Thanks SHBailey! I did see a video about that! It was pretty neat! I've not experienced an earthquake thankfully, that must be kinda scary. We just tend to get some pretty bad wind storms around here.
Deb I hope everything works out for Eric and the grandkids! And that you're feeling better.

Thanks Sue and Makayla, I am feeling a bit better but still get tired after not much energy spent, but it's getting better day by day.

I am very lucky that I have such a big family. After chiro on Sat, I'm invited to Eric and Traci's to put up their tree. I'm going to bring a few ornaments that I don't use anymore. My place is too small for a tree and the critters really couldn't care less LOL.

So big news about Gabriel. He walked from the ramp by the balcony door to outside my bedroom door. He's NEVER done that, I was so pleased to see him walking all that way! So he got a few hours of cuddling for his efforts. At least I got all the dragons bathed, calcium and fed today. I've been so tired that I haven't been keeping up with their feeding and, of course, Imp has lost weight. So now it's daily food for him for awhile to make that up.

As for returning to work, I'm hoping to get that sorted for next week, 3 afternoons to start, then more and more, full time b4 Xmas, hopefully. This bug really got me, that's for sure. Seems alot of people are off work with the same thing.

Then on Sunday night, we're going to the Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver for their Christmas lights, we're meeting my sister at 5p with my mom and dad and my 2 youngest nieces. Eric and I are taking public transport, as no idea about parking and don't even want to try. So we'll see how that goes. I'll go pick them up, then we can go from my place, then I'll drive them home. Part of my Xmas present to them.

Gabriel is just plain amazing.

Hopefully you can keep Imp from losing too much weight now that you're feeling better. I'm having a similar problem trying to find the energy to feed Puff a little snack or two in the middle of the week besides his big Saturday feeding when my husband is home to help. But he seems to be doing fine either way so far. He still goes nuts over the mouse cable even right after he's eaten -- seems to think it's a worm.

We haven't decorated for Christmas for the last several years -- just not up to it, and as you say, the reptiles don't care. One of the last times that my husband put up some Christmas lights, he was actually using them as an extension cord for one of his computers.

My dad visited Canada several times and the gardens were one of his favorite places. He was going to take me there to celebrate my high school graduation, but the trip got cancelled, mainly because I decided to go all 4 years to a private university instead of the first 2 years to a state funded junior college, so we couldn't afford the trip. As it has turned out, although I've been about as far west and as far south as you can go in the country (Hawaii, Florida), I've never set food outside United States territory, and now it's looking like I probably never will. It's really kind of funny that I ended up in Alaska after all that was said and done.

It's our turn for wind today, and it "warmed" up (relatively speaking) with rain instead of snow, but there's still plenty of snow on the ground and it's getting pretty sloppy out there. My husband's walking to and from work in this mess, so I hope he'll be ok, but otherwise it's a good day to stay inside and cuddle reptiles. The setting sun peeked out for a few minutes (just after 3pm) and it's been really pretty for a while -- looking for rainbows but haven't spotted one yet. Puff's pancaked out under the heat lamps watching my activities and using his thermometer for a pillow so I can't tell how warm he really is except from past experience. :mrgreen:

Sorry I haven't posted for a while! Its been so busy around here with work and school and the rest of life.
Beardies are doing good! Norberta is still brumating and doing well I feel like.
Mufasa I woke up a week ago and she still hasn't gone back in her hide (she even chose to bask a little earlier), so I think she is staying up for a little bit. I'm afraid to feed her in case she decides to go back so sleep as soon as she eats some roaches. Should I go ahead and try?

I don't have any new pics at the moment, I'll try and get some later. Its so nice to see both their faces together!!