Literarily, horrified.

[UrbanChameleon]

Sorry to hear that happen, but happy the animals seemed to have survived alright.
All you can do is tell your friend that it seemed things didnt go well, and that you are dissappointed. Give an opportunity to have them appoligize and consider forgiving them (but dont forget, and dont rely on her again)

I completely agree. I was so exhausted from my trip that I fell asleep at 4 PM yesterday and slept for 18 hours. I still don't feel quite like myself. It's difficult to know "how to feel" after being so exhausted, and coming home to this kind of situation. I feel like I'm just "existing" right now, so I'm just taking it easy. I for sure won't forget. It might take me some time to forgive, but the day will come. I'm not going to hold onto this anger, it's unhealthy. I just care about my babies. If they're okay.. I'm okay.

I'd like to weigh in here as a "snake person". I have kept pythons and still do. I have a quite a few snakes, a few dogs, some leopard geckos, and ONE chameleon.

I'll say this, the chameleon takes a LOT more little work. I don't have a problem doing it but the extra time matters. I was pretty okay with the misting because I keep green tree pythons so spraying to drink I understood, multiple times a day.

But look at the difference, on just food alone. My chameleon is still young so I'm feeding him 2 meals a day (I find him gnawing on branches if I give him all the food at once). That's handling a bunch of little squirmy bugs, crickets more then worms, instead of laying a frozen thawed mouse on tongs. Not only that but that means your feeding the one chameleon 14 times a week, you feed snakes 1 time a week.

Chameleons are also funny in the sense that my guy goes to the same branch around 10 A.M. to poop. EVERYDAY he goes and poops, snakes poop usually once a week maybe two. The spot cleaning is a lot easier.

I love ALL my animals, and keep only reptiles I'm truly interested in. I know if I take a life into my hands I have to take care of him or her as well as I would myself. The little cham can't spray himself, I can go to the kitchen for water right now if I wanted. It all depends on the person, I'm watching my friends small reptile family as we speak. Fed and watered on time, and keep the poop out of the house. I wouldn't want poop all over my giant dining room NO SIR.

That is a great post. I think you hit the nail right on the head. They are two totally different worlds. It would be like arguing that a dinosaur and a Chameleon are the same. Care for every species is different. Some require more attention and money than others. I did not expect the babysitters to understand, but I did expect them to follow directions. As I did for all of their species when I watched them last month.

Instead.. they threw a cup with 50 crickets in the Chameleon cage, and a huge water bowl in the Crested Gecko cage. All of this so they didn't have to stop by for 5 minutes once a day. The drip tray was about to overflow, crickets were not watered or fed, my gecko did not have any Crested Gecko Diet, etc. I just feel so awful that they didn't have what they needed for days.

Even though some species don't require as much time, you would still think almost anyone with multiple reptiles would understand. If you have 15+ snakes, amongst many other animals, don't you think that would require a lot of time? It just doesn't make sense... and maybe it's not supposed to. Maybe some people just do enough to keep their animals alive. If they have something better to do, they do it. I find that extremely sad and disgusting.

So, what are the "problem" health signs your animals are showing as of now? Have any pictures of the animals. This would be great for us to see what you see. You havent described anything to offer help on :/

Honestly, I don't think I could tell you much of anything. As I am in the dark too. I'm not sure what was given to them, and what wasn't. My Chameleon did seem very hungry yesterday, and the crickets in the cup weren't dusted. The crickets weren't gutloaded because they had no food or water when I got home. And I'm not even sure if he ate them. Since the Mistking and lights were on timers, I know that he most likely drank at was able to bask. So that's ruled out. I have not seen a fecal, and he poops every morning around 11 AM. So two days without a fecal. He did gag a little bit yesterday, but that's it.

He ate 4-5 Butterworms and Repashy Calcium Plus dusted crickets yesterday. He does not seem at all interested in the Butterworms today, and I have not given him crickets yet. He seems to be acting normal, and looks fine. Yesterday he had wrinkles on his skin towards his back. Limbs look okay.

I'm going to be watching him very closely this week. As everyone knows with Chameleons, they can hide any kind of illness fairly well. So I could be missing something, or problems could arise over the next few days. I will post if anything out of the ordinary happens. Here is a pic of him taken today. It's an Instagram pic, so I apologize for the filter.

 

[DJBMURDER]

That's that shit I don't like...if you aren't qualified or willing to put the time and dedication into taking care of someone else's pet, then get lost! I mean to me, my chams are like dogs to dog lovers...I almost obsess over them lol....But I'll tell you what, the best cham sitter I've ever had strangely enough was my mom, she is a SAINT!....I went to Atlanta on a church mission trip for 5-7 days, its been a while so i forget the exact amount of days, but she put her time and effort to the max into taking care of Cain and Katniss, my male and female chams...She dusted the crickets with Calcium w/o d3 and free range fed each cham, making sure each ate ALL their food so there weren't any ones roaming around....She misted them for a couple minutes about 4-6 times a day, the lights are on a timer so that was okay, kept the cage clean, and even gutloaded the crickets with my commercial gutloader AND fresh baby spinach, romaine lettuce, carrots, among other things as well. Thats a DAMN good cham-sitter I'd say! I'm so sorry to hear about your experience though and I hope they recover to their full strength!

 

[UrbanChameleon]

I think you are quite right to give yourself tine to "calm down" there is nothing to be gained in wading in before you think about the consequences of your actions. Take your time before you speak to your friend and go with your gut feeling. It is really good that you are voicing your anger for us to listen and help you. It is very disappointing what has happened and it could have ended in disaster but thankfully it didn't. Enjoy giving your little ones the TLC they deserve.

Thank you. And I will definitely enjoy spending the next few days relaxing with my animals. It's always best to give yourself time, even if it takes a few days.

Well six days is alot more than two and believe me I understand why you are upset. Thank god you did not have to depend on them for water.

I know. I'm so glad I bought the Mistking before I left. It was worth every penny.

I've found that some of the best people to care for my animals while on vacation are the ones who seem scared that they might not do it right. That's just my experience, but they seem to take extra care to do EVERYTHING on the list to make sure they don't kill it. One of my friends was terrified she would kill my chameleon (back when I only had one) so she ended up misting him extra and giving him extra food. I'm sure he loved it.

I'm sorry that happened to you. I had a babysitting mishap where one of my chameleons ended up dying and another died a few weeks later after the whole thing. It was a very sad time. Just be happy that he seems to be doing much better.

See that's what I've gotten out of this whole ordeal. It seems the people that are most paranoid about killing your animal, will give it the extra attention it needs. And we all know Chameleons need extra attention. Lol.

I'm so sorry about the death of your two Chameleons. As a caretaker of anything, you expect the worst to happen and try prepare for it (mentally). But you can never be prepared for something like that. As scary as it was coming home to this situation, I am very thankful to still have my animals with me. Sadly.. as with the second death, just because an animal isn't dead when you walk through the door, it doesn't mean that everything is still okay. That to me is just as scary, waiting to see if things are going to go downhill. I'm sorry for your loss. Hopefully you won't have to go through that ever again.

I think this may be all about perspective. We forget how long it took us to understand what truly complex animals chameleons are. You can't expect someone without chameleons to really understand that. Yes, we may write down complex instructions, but these people have no personal connection to the animal, so it's not constantly at the forefront of their minds as it is with us. I'm sure she thinks she did a good job, and she may even think you are being ungrateful for not calling and thanking her- again, it's all about perspective. I wouldn't let it ruin your friendship, as good friends are very hard to come by. And really, is it honestly fair of us to expect someone with no experience to care for our chameleons as we do?

As was mentioned, a responsible 10-year-old would probably do the best job possible as kids at that age feel so proud that you would even think so highly of them to ask. I teach 9 and 10-year olds, and they live for those kinds of opportunities, and honestly, you can change their lives by simply believing in them Forgive your friend, that is what life is about.

I understand exactly what you are saying. I do agree, but I also think that a person should not agree to watch over your animals if they don't think they can handle it. My friend has seen me care for my Chameleons and listened to me talk about them for a very long time. She knows what it entails. I did not expect her to do everything the way I do it, or care as much as I do. However, I did expect her to get 12 crickets out of the bin, lightly dust them with Repashy Calcium Plus, and shake them onto the floor of his cage. I showed her how to do it, and wrote down simple instructions to refer to if she forgot something. She keeps her own roach colony and has to feed multiple geckos, so it's not that she didn't understand. She did not want to do it. She didn't want to get off of her butt and drive 1 minute away to put crickets into Loki's cage. Plain and simple. I would have not asked her to do it, if I thought she was incapable.

So yes, I totally agree with what you stated. On the other hand, in my case in particular, the situation was a little different. My mother is a school teacher and I do think one of her students would have done an excellent job. My friend had already offered to take care of my animals, if I took care of hers for a weekend. That was our agreement. So I didn't offer anyone else the job, because we both needed animal sitters and trusted each other. I came through (and cleaned her house to be nice), and she stopped by once. She will always be my best friend, but I don't think things will ever be the same. And I refuse to blame myself for it.

I know how you feel and it is awful. I had my friend watch my animals when my wife and I took a long weekend to NYC last December. On our last day there I called and asked him how it was going and he goes "everything is going great well I did find a leopard gecko tail on the bathroom floor but other than that its all good". I'm like WTF are you talking about you found a tail on the floor that's not good. His first response was ITS NOT MY FAULT I'm like then who's fault is it the gecko didn't open its cage on its own. So we spent our last day in NYC completely paranoid thinking the gecko was getting tormented and eaten by our cats. I probably could have killed him if he had been there when I got home. When we got home we immediately started tearing the house apart looking for the gecko. Luckily after she dropped her tail she ran back into the gecko room and was hiding in the gecko rack behind another gecko's tub. The worst part is we were gone for 3 days so the rack she was in was our adult rack that my wife specifically told him not to touch. They would have been ok with what we fed them for 3 days without him touching them. He took it upon himself to mess with them anyway. We also had another gecko missing that we found in the wrong bin with another gecko, but he denied touching it. I asked him so what you are saying is the baby gecko opened its cage then closed it crawled up the rack opened another cage crawled in and closed that cage? It kind of sucks in that I lost one of my best friends and one of my animals got maimed. Its hard to find a good reptile sitter. Hope your critters recover well my gecko grew her tail back and is doing well but it still makes me sick its the only gecko we have that has a regrown tail and everytime I see her I feel like crap because it happened to her so I could go on vacation.

You shouldn't feel guilty about it. It was not your fault. Whether your trip was business or vacation, you cannot stop your life for an animal. As much as we love them, you don't see mothers not going on vacation for 18 years while their child is growing up. If you have an agreement with someone, they should honor it. Period.

I'm sure your gecko doesn't blame you for what happened. So you shouldn't blame yourself. It is nobodies fault but the person entrusted to care for your animal. Unless you did not give clear directions, the person is literally incapable of caring for the animal, or you did not make the amount of work clear beforehand, you are NOT at fault. It is completely different if an emergency comes up, or if there was a small miscommunication, etc. But in that case, the babysitter should call and be honest with you. Not lie or pretend like they did everything correctly. That is unacceptable. Mistakes happen, but laziness and no attempt to follow simple instructions is not acceptable.

In my case, I blew up my friends phone every night to make sure everything went fine. They did not answer even ONE phone call for six days. That alone is enough to drive a person crazy. I was holding onto hope thinking that they were caring for my animals. But I came home to this situation. I could not leave and come back home. I hate to see so many stories similar to mine. I wish there was something we could do about it. No one should have to go through the stress and worry that many of us had to endure. Even though I needed to come on here to vent, instead of to my friend, it doesn't change what happened. What's done, is done. But our stories should be a warning for others about to go out of town. Choose wisely and be clear.

 

[UrbanChameleon]

Update:

Loki finally passed a fecal today. I took a pic of it. It doesn't look all that great. The poop and urine both have an orangish tint to them. He just started eating Butterworms, so could that play into it? He usually poops once a day in the mornings. He hasn't gone since I've been home (about 2-3 days). I'm a little concerned that he could have been constipated. He ate 4-5 Butterworms the day I got home, and hasn't seemed at all interested in them since. However, he is gulping down crickets like crazy.

His behavior has been quite normal. Although, he has been acting a little weird. I believe it is just puberty. My Veiled displayed similar behavior when becoming a man. Loki never really climbs the screen in his cage. Yesterday and today, he got a sudden burst of energy and climbed all over the place while firing up. He does this for about 5-10 minutes. I also found this..

I'm assuming that's his first sperm. It came out along right before/after his fecal. He seems hydrated, which is why the orangish tint in the fecal baffles me a little bit. He drinks daily, and I watched him drink for about a minute today. I'm guessing it's the butters, as the silks make his poop white and watery too. But I'm going to make sure he gets plenty of water.. just to be on the safe side.

Any ideas or suggestions? I'll continue observing him closely the rest of this week.

Here are a few pics from today when he was firing up. I apologize for the pink/purple tint. Artificial lighting sucks.

 

[Rottsko]

hi jordan,
i totally missed this thread and i'm sorry hear about all the bad news w/ your best friend and your animals.

looking at the last post and pics, he looks to be doing fine but i don't know if it's the angle of the pics but is his casque deflated? he may need to be hydrated more often from the orange urate and if his casque is deflated (but you knew that already .)

if he's eating, pooping and spitting sperm plugs it sounds like he didn't have too bad of a time w/o you. hope you have had time to walk away from the ledge and hopefully you and friend can patch things up.