Another rescue.

SHBailey":23pif13w said:

Glad to hear she seems to be improving, and it's nice that you have a vet that will treat her at no cost. <<< being a native wild reptile , he's obligated to assist any that are brought to him injured or sick , I believe they hit up Parks & Wildlife for the treatment costs.
If WIRES were in the area , and if there was a WIRES carer who was interested in lizards , the vet would give me the choice of either
>> leaving the sick / injured lizard with him (very stressful scary noisy place for wild skink)
>> contacting WIRES and surrendering her to them (no WIRES , and they are not interested in lizards)
>> since I've skills and experience , my keeping the lizard and treating it at home under the vets supervision ( he gets to examine it regularly )
>> or same as above only I treat at home and the vet is on standby should be needed.
Most people don't know vets look after wild native animals gratis.

BSFL sounds like a very good idea for her -- they're small and soft, high in calcium, wiggly enough for her to notice once she gets the gunk cleared out of her eyes, but still easy for her to catch without too much effort.
<<< my thoughts exactly.
<<< if had some mealworm sized silkworms , they'd be a good option too for all the same reasons + the beneficial enzymes in them. I'm waiting for fresh batch of eggs to hatch (any day now) and it'll take a few weeks - a month for them to get big enough for her.

It's amazing how quickly some animals can recover if they get some good care before they're too far gone. Thanks for sharing her story with the rest of us. Still hoping she'll continue to improve.

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Short of putting her on brought spectrum antibiotics (injections) and buying some antibiotic eye ointment , she's getting the best care she's likely to get , and I can dedicate a bit more time to her than the vet can too. Big plus is I can monitor her closely and it's quiet and much less stressful for her her in here with us, and she knows my wife and I (hence responding expecially to my wife's voice).


I'm glad to have another water skink in my care, only I wish she'd not been in need of help and on death's door.

Since most forms of conjunctivitis are highly contagious , I'm wiping my hands with F10 Handwipes and change my shirt after handling her to protect the pet bluetongues and my pet beardies and just in case she is carrying something else they have never been exposed to - so doing my best do good infection control and quaranteen protocols.
If she lasts that long - not out of the woods yet by a long shot - she'll be under quaranteen for 3 months.

I'm going to call her Fluffy. I think name just suits her.

Fluffy is pretty active tonight.

I'm glad to hear that she still seems to be improving, and it sounds like she's in the best possible situation she could hope to have ended up in, of all the possible choices.

I think it's been a good idea to try the honey on her eyes first -- it seems like a gentler, less drastic approach. You can always get a prescription for antibiotics from the vet later if the infection doesn't clear up soon. And it's good that you're taking precautions to protect your other lizards.

She's a member of the family now that she has a name, huh? She's probably in the process of figuring out how she's going to tame these wild humans and get them to satisfy her every need. :wink: (My husband sometimes points out that to them, we're the "wild animals.")

I love that you named her Fluffy

This may sound like an odd bit of advice - when any of us (including various pets) would get eye infections, my mom would swab our eyes gently with a tissue that was dipped in warmed canned milk - so it was sopping wet, but if squeezed would dribble. I'm not sure what it was about the warmed canned milk - but it always seemed to work. I remember her doing it to our old hamster and it cleaned up her eyes in no time. It just may be one of those extra things you could try. I know it sounds odd and old wives-tale-ish, I only mention it as I've seen it work on others.

NBGwen":2atnql99 said:

I love that you named her Fluffy

This may sound like an odd bit of advice - when any of us (including various pets) would get eye infections, my mom would swab our eyes gently with a tissue that was dipped in warmed canned milk - so it was sopping wet, but if squeezed would dribble. I'm not sure what it was about the warmed canned milk - but it always seemed to work. I remember her doing it to our old hamster and it cleaned up her eyes in no time. It just may be one of those extra things you could try. I know it sounds odd and old wives-tale-ish, I only mention it as I've seen it work on others.

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I'm doing a similar thing - very gently - with a strip of paper towel that is soaked with 1:4 manuka honey at least 2x per day ,this is in addition to depositing a small droplet of 1:4 manuka honey in saline on each eye.

Right eye appeared open just a crack today .

She did really well with the assist feeding of VetaFarm Critta Care - Reptile , I deposited a drop of manuka honey on her snout first and the slipped the little 23G plastic catheter tube into the corner of her mouth , this encouraged her to lick the honey and while she was doing this I deposited a small drop of Critta Care on the side of her mouth and snout.
She took 0.4ml in about 20min and was licking the Critta Care quite nicely , only had to "tickle" the tongue from the back corner of mouth a few times to keep going.
She also told me when she'd had enough ,the skink neck twisting thin that water skinks do when they are full and trying to make more space.

She is also getting stronger.

I feel that she's making slow improvements.

Seemed to enjoy the UV from the old 26W UVB200 ( which now performs like a 26W UVB150 ) , spent 2.5 hr under it before crawling off to a shady / warmer area.
Lucky and Wriggles ( water skinks ) used to only bask for maybe 1 hr before they crawled away looking for shade.
Been overcast / rainy most of the month til the day we rescued her ,so she probably needs the UV .

My kit (add a 23G catheter (plastic) tube:

1ml syringe has made in the syringe 1:4 manuka honey in saline, has drawing needle attached.
5ml syringe has Critta Care Reptile in it - I keep the Critta Care in the Syringe in the fridge between feeds, has a feeding needle attached.


Fluffy close up of her worse eye , yesterday ( that's a bit of shed hanging off her near it ).


Nasty lacerations on her back - whippersnipped ??


Bathing and drinking in her shallow pond (only about 3mm depth of water in it). Saw her little blue coloured tongue for the first time while she was drinking.


Exploring while basking under the old 26W UVB200, it throws a bit of warmth (BTW).


Basking under UVB today after feed.
Her back is a rough state - lots are lacerations , all being treated with 1:4 manuka honey.
Her tummy and chest are in good shape.


nap time after a bit feed of Critta Care this afternoon. Stayed there for 3hr then moved about 3 inch to a cool area .
Not sure what the 2 blemishes under her chin are - keeping a close eye on them.

I'm sitting here literal going "awwwww"...she's so prertty. Poor baby girl, she's a trooper! I was on my work computer yesterday and no images would show.

Sounds like you have her on a steady healing upswing. Reptiles heal so slowly. I'm so glad she has you. ❤

NBGwen":3dpwnj3i said:

I'm sitting here literal going "awwwww"...she's so prertty. Poor baby girl, she's a trooper! I was on my work computer yesterday and no images would show.

Sounds like you have her on a steady healing upswing. Reptiles heal so slowly. I'm so glad she has you. ❤

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Had the problem with images yesterday - and I thought it was my connection .

So far so good, but she's not out of the woods yet.


Eastern water skinks are very beautiful medium size skinks and I'm dumfounded why so few people here in Australia have captive bred breeding colonies.They are darned hard to find and rarely advertised , they make wonderful and very interactive pets.

If she recovers I'll find it very hard to release her back into my backyard or under the back of my house (which is where she's been living).

I don't know if I could release her! I've seen skinks advertised...I may have to see about getting one in the future. She's so pretty, her tail makes it look painful ☹

NBGwen":22nrmrj1 said:

I don't know if I could release her! I've seen skinks advertised...I may have to see about getting one in the future. She's so pretty, her tail makes it look painful ☹

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I think it is .... she was holding it up off the grown and didn't like it touched , I'll give the tail a soak in 1/4 strength betadine on Saturday , essentially I'll draw up 10ml of betadine into a syringe and the draw up 30ml of saline in the same syringe and the dangle her stump in the solution for 10mins.

They do naturally drop their tails as defence when being attacked , it wiggles like crazy and is meant to be decoy, I've seen freshly shed and recently shed tails before and her's looks very nasty in comparison.

I'm givng her eyes & stump the dilute honey treatment each night before I go to bed , so it's time for another treatment. ( nearly 2am ).


<<< yummy stuff that diluted manuka honey , as soon as it spread to her lips her little blue tongue was licking like crazy .... I think she thinks it's a treat.

I understand that you've got some pretty strict laws there about keeping wild animals as "pets", but I have a feeling that if all goes well, Fluffy's not going to be "wild" anymore after you get done nursing her back to health -- she may decide to stick around even if you do let her go in the backyard.

Her tail does look like it may have been chewed off or something worse than her dropping it herself. I've noticed that it's usually a clean break when they do it themselves, and hardly even bleeds. I had a chance to see that on a field trip in one of my biology classes -- someone caught a lizard and it dropped its tail and all the students were passing the tail around -- I think the lizard itself got away. I was at the end of the line and it was still wiggling when I got it, so I held it for a while after the other students lost interest. I wanted to see how long it would keep moving, but I didn't time it with a watch. That's actually a pretty nifty survival strategy -- the predator gets a little tidbit and the lizard escapes with its life and grows a new tail.

Betadine and honey are probably a good idea for Fluffy. Hopefully that will be enough to keep what's left of her tail from getting infected and help it heal, otherwise the vet can probably prescribe some antibiotics. It will be good if it gets to the point where it doesn't hurt her anymore, whether she manages to grow a new one or not.

And that's nice that she seems to be enjoying the honey, and getting some calories into her as well. She deserves some "treats" after whatever horrible things she's been through.

My first rescue (Lucky) was also a water skink, I rescued him next door's mongrel cat who was actually in hot pursuit and chased him from next door onto my front lawn were I first saw him (a 6mnth on juvenile at most) with the cat not far behind , I happened to in the right place at the right time as I was sitting on my front steps getting ready to feed the big alpha male water skink who hung out in the corner near the drain pipe from the roof gutters, I intervened and scooped him up and then was faced with a cat who had blood lust and was leaping to try to get him out of my hand , I had to literally send the cat sailing through the air with a kick to it's guts to deter it and scare it away.
He'd been clawed or bitten in the left side of his face - penetrating wounds to his left eye and corner of lower jaw , broken jaw and lost his tail (dropped it).
He was taken inside , deposited in a shoe box with air holes poked in it on some facial tissue and left to calm down overnight , and found alive and very scared in the morning so off to the local vet who examined him and started him off on both oral and IM antibiotics and gave me the choice of caring for him or leaving him with them. Was told he likely wouldn't survive the infection from the cat attack but occasionally some do.
He became a great pet but was unable to chew and lost his injured eye so was never going to be able to fend for himself in the wild if released so he became a pet. He became megatame and I had to feed him the guts for mealworms and small crickets , squeezed out onto his nose and this was likely to have continue for the rest of his life.
He regenerated his tail and grew from 4g to 18g over the next 8 months but about 2 months after the vet gave him the all clear and stopped his antibiotics he had a sudden relapse and was dead inside 12 hrs.
Vet discovered there was a hidden abscess in his body that has ruptured and well that was that, major SI and nothing could have saved him.

Wriggles was another rescue - she came to grief when the lawn-mowing kid accidentially whipper snippered her on the back (he told he at the but she ran away and he lost sight of her) he knew I had pet bluetongues and was very kind to the resident wild animals) , she was found laying very still a few days later under the back steps and only moved (wriggled) when I picked up what I thought was a dead skink.
She recovered and became mega tame and very friendly and we had her for about 3 years (she was already to my reckoning at least 4 years old when I rescued her) and she died quietly in her sleep on night of old age.



I'm hoping Fluffy wasn't attacked by one the flee ranging local cats , or the dogs next door , I'm hoping she was just accidentially whippersnipped and her tail actually got cut off in the accident. but will never know.

Today she took another 0.4 ml of CRITTER CARE with manuka honey entrée to get her licking her snout, her limit seems to 0.35 - 0.4 ml which is about 1/2 the recommended daily feed but I'm happy to get that much into her.

I'm thinking of upping the concentration of manuka honey eye drops from 1:4 to 1:2 so they are a little less fluid and stay on the eyelids were I want to be and will give her the benefits of the antibiotic properties in manuka honey. 1:4 seems too liquid and runny.

Today while I was feeding her - slow time consuming job but at least she's getting the hang of it and knows when to touch the corner of her mouth with plastic tube form a SURFLO IV catheter it means lick lips and nose so it's getting a bit quicker a process.
I'm glad I haven't needed to resort to using the feeding needle to get food directly into her stomach , but on the second day this was looking like a necessary evil.

More improvement , I'd sware she turned to look over my thumb at the corner of the lounge (lots of possible hidey places there and she may well know them and remember them if she's been coming inside over the last few years) and then she tried to leap off my hand --- only stopped her by holding one of her legs , settled and finished her meal after that.
She probably has some vision through that little slit in her left eyelid , and the fact she tried to make a bid for freedom is IMO a very good sign.
She's an assertive little girl.

Another indication that she has some sight is I placed her in her rooftop private basking spot in preparation to place her (in her tum in the 30L archive box) under the 26W UVB200 , no soon has I turned then UV on she got active and climbed down and made for her little warm hide's door and disappeared inside. Obviously had enough UVA & UVB the other day.

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UPDATE : Cheakie is back inside, saw her come out from under the (just closed by me) laundry door, she explored the bedrooms, bathroom and study and then disappeared back under closed laundry door into the laundry - not seen her a few weeks, but heard something in the bedroom yesterday making scratchy sounds behind the chest of draws.

My wife reports the number is skinks hanging out under the back sump is now two , was 4 . (They were very hungry this afternoon and enjoyed a feast of mealworms and dead crickets, and got two dead small (mealworm sized) silkworms and a bunch of dead crickets yesterday so they are very well fed.

Midnight and time for Fluffy's 2nd eye honey solution treatment.

Found her fast asleep in her little hide curled up in a roll I made for her from 1/2 sheet of paper towel folded and the rolled loosely , was a perfect snug little bed for her.

Before disturbing her I made up a new batch of manuka honey solution as follows :

Took a fresh 1ml syringe with the 18G (pink) drawing up needle from the dilute honey syringe attached, draw about 0.8 ml of honey (very slow as very viscous) into the new syringe.
The I pulled the plunger on the dilute honey solution needle all the way back to create a large void in the needle (nozzle pointed up) , and using the drawing up needle inserted into the dilute honey needle's chamber I discharged 0.3ml of pure manuka honey into the dilute honey chamber.
back to prove a large air space above the needle (nozzle pointed up) , and using the drawing up needle inserted into the dilute honey needle's chamber I discharged 0.3ml of pure manuka honey into the dilute honey chamber.

Calculation of concentration:
Start volume of 1:4 solution of manuka honey in saline = 0.5ml
End volume = 0.8ml
Added 0.3 ml pure manuka honey

Will try a 14G drawing up needle next time I need to draw up pure honey , the larger bore will help achieve a good flow and larger surface for the syringe vacuum created to suck the honey into the syringe's chamber.

0.5ml of 1:4 honey == 0.5/4 = 0.125ml honey

Total honey in dilute honey syringe = 0.3 + 0.125 = 0.425ml
Conc honey = 0.425/0.8 = 0.53 ==> 1:2 , so I've essentially doubled the concentration of honey in the solution I will be depositing on Fluffy's eyes and stump.

I found the concentration seems to have more stiction ==> stays put
+
Is less runny , more viscous than the 1:4 solution which essentially flows like water and has similar surface tension and spreading characteristics.

She hardly woke when picked her up the medicate her eyes and stump .

Will check her tomorrow , am hoping the stickier solution doesn't cause more problem.

Fluffy gave me a present today - a nice big well formed poo with nice white urates attached , she crawled out of her hide and left it as far away from her door as she could then crawled back in and was resting with her head dangling out her door when got up.

Both eyes closed today.

She also managed to put away 0.6ml of CRITTA CARE today, I've resorted to a feeder nozzle (little green plastic thing that came with a syringe cap from an EBAY seller - had a couple of sets of these in my animal mothering and first aid kit for several years) , being shorter and having larger bore than the 18G feeding needle , the Critta Care flows nicely though it and doesn't stick to the end as much as it does to the SS feeding needle's bulb shaped end.

She was also more active today , looked over my thumb again and this time crawled out of my hand and onto my shirt and curled up on my chest near my armpit.

Deposited her back in her rooftop platform when done feeding and treating her eyes, stump and back lacerations with 1:2 honey (applied to back and stump using a damp q-tip) but she climbed down and crawled about settling behind her hide up on her side against the cool plastic.
Used a water soaked q-tip to gently wipe away gunk from her eyes , some muck came away on the q-tip., this was before applying a drop of dilute manuka honey to each eye.


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Cheakie showed up again today as I was dealing with Fluffy , she came out from under the laundry door again, this time in hot persuit of a roach , which she caught and dispatched and made a meal of in very short order --- good girl --- she's a great little hunter and earning her keep.
She then disappeared in the spare (junk) bedroom and hasn't come back out.

That's more encouraging news. Keep up the good work! I'm glad she found her way to you when she did and hope she continues her strong recovery.

Been up earlier this morning and pooed in water .

Discovered her napping in her new fav spot , in her little toilet roll tube cave at the warm end of her tub.
Only wanted 0.2ml Critta Care today, she lets me know when she's had enough. She's very assertive.

She doesn't enjoy being held securely , but is quite happy to sit in my open hand and let me deposit drops of Critta Care and an occasional drops of manuka honey on her snout - the honey doesn't stay there long - her little blue tongue gets busy and makes fast work of it.

Noticed her left eye was open a little bit more this morning , I could see the reflection of my LED head-torch reflecting off her eye .... I think I'm making progress. She also seems to enjoy my very lightly wiping her eyes and snout with a piece of water logged paper towel.

She also seems to like curling up near my armpit, when she was finished being fed - told me was done by turning around and she headed for my chest near my left arm pit again.

More photos of her to show how she's coming on, taken yesterday

Climbing down from her rooftop basking deck.



Exploring - much more active.


Cooling off.



Fluffy's new favourate spot, no longer feels the need to hide.