Posted by cwatbay on August 29, 2000 at 16:59:46:
This is a touching but true story:
A little over two years ago we adopted a 2-3 year old ig which we named Frankie. The people who had him before didn't want him any more because he had grown too big. It had been many many years before when I was a kid that I had an ig, and, our pet kingsnake had just escaped.
So, I got a 100 gal aquarium and made it into an ig house, with heat lamp, UVB lamp, etc. Frankie liked to sleep on top of the cage where the warm air from below would rise and keep him warm.
He also had free roaming throughout the house and I would often catch him hiding all day in some cold corner of the house.
We had adopted him in May, so that when it got warmer outside, he could sit for hours in his favorite holly tree, which was the smallest of the trees we had and I could get him out of it without too much hassle. Anyway, whenever he went outside, he would climb up into his tree and be pretty happy all day.
As time went on, colder weather came and Frankie would constantly find the coldest part of the house to hang out. On top of his cage, he would be warm on the bottom and, of course, cold on top.
Eventually this routine caught up with him and us. To make a long story short, Frankie suffered kidney failure during the time that I started building the first of many large insulated enclosures. Unfortunately, Frankie's did not get built fast enough. Frankie died as I was putting the finishing touches on his new house. I received a call late in the afternoon that Frankie had past away.
We had taken Frankie into the vet a few days before when we noticed the symptoms of kidney failure ( we didn't know about kidney failure at the time ). Stool and blood work was done and we were awaiting the results.
When I called the vet to tell him of Frankie's death, the vet said he had just received the results and it showed kidney failure. He said the failure was probably due to extremely temperature variance which put too much of a stress on Frankie's system.
Well the next day was very very hard. Frankie was buried in a box with all of his favorite things that he liked best. It took me all day, with a lot of time outs, to dig his grave which I placed across from his favorite holly tree which he liked so much.
Obviously now, time has past, and I have learned a lot about igs, enclosures, diet, etc. I have put a lot of serious effort into making sure that all of our igs have the best things going for them, without the factor of me making some naiive and stupid mistakes.
The unusual part of this story is, a new holly tree has grown in the exact spot where Frankie is buried.
CW