As of about two months ago i have a hand me down leapord gecko that was 3/4 starved to death by the elementary school teacher that didn't want to feed him crickets because she thinks thats gross. He is also without a full tail due to a heat rock that the teacher used that burned it off. SO enough with the back story. He was doing tons better putting on weight slowely for the first month or so when he finally figured out what those yummy hoppy things in his cage were (crickets). But then he started not eating the last two weeks, ocasionaly just picking the crickets up and thrashing about before he let them go. So i got concerned because he lost the weight that he had managed to put on. I took him to the vet yestarday (thankfully we have one in tulsa that deals with reptiles and fish as a specialty) and he tells me that he would be dead at this point if she were a human and is probably too weak to squash the crickets in her mouth at this point. SO the vet tells me that i now have to tear the butts off of crickets and basicaly force feed the poor lizard (named Sally by the way) because the butt end is actualy the nutritionaly digestable part. OK so its not so much force feeding because now she kind of anticipates the free meal and opens up more easily. So its going to take 6 months of 4 cricket butts a day and some chicken broth as a extra boost. Now im not generaly that squeemish but ripping apart crickets (more like squashing then ripping) really bothers me. But im stil going to do it, but its really hard, well not so much after the squishing part is over. I just figured that i would share my story with you. Because it is such an odd one. Cricket butts and all. The pic looks kind of odd because she was in the middle of a shed when i took it. And the extent of the tail you can see in the pic is all the tail she has got, its abut and inch long. She is not a natural color pattern, i have no idea where she came from but the vet says its a designer pattern and she is probably around 2 years old.
