jcarlsen
Chameleon Enthusiast
This morning I found Jasper motionless in his little safety net and his colors a bit off (darker) than his normal sleeping colors. His eyes were very sunken in and upon giving him a few pokes and nudges, it confirmed that he had passed away. I knew this day was coming soon as he'd grown more lethargic in the last few months, fell quite a bit and just in the last week started refusing food, and sleeping during the day. He had just turned 5 a couple weeks ago...
Obviously my mind is pretty scrambled, and I'm of course questioning what I could've done better, not just recently but throughout the entire time I've kept him. My most recent vet visit was this past summer and I was more or less congratulated for having gotten him this far and told that most of the things I was noticing seemed to be a sign of aging. Still, today feels like a reminder that I'm very much new with this. Jasper was my first chameleon, and my first reptile, really. I hope I gave him as good a life as possible, despite knowing I've made many mistakes along the way.
So my question to everyone is really about the stuff in his enclosure. There's a live pothos, which is doing "just okay" in my opinion, a set of wooden branches, some of those black bendy artificial vines, fake plastic vines, some fake plants etc... My thinking was I would dispose of most of it for sanitary reasons, especially the most porous stuff like the wood. Do you all think the fake vines/fake plants could be soaked and cleaned and sanitized for re-use someday or would it be safer to just dispose of them along with everything else and basically gut the cage? Also, in terms of the floor and sides of the enclosure (it's an all screen 48" dragonstrand) how should I go about cleaning everything?
Thanks again and thank you for all the help everyone has offered over the years. I have just barely started grieving Jasper, so my plan is to clean up his cage and take a break for a few months and maybe in the future adopt another after some more research and adjustments, but too soon to really think about that.
Obviously my mind is pretty scrambled, and I'm of course questioning what I could've done better, not just recently but throughout the entire time I've kept him. My most recent vet visit was this past summer and I was more or less congratulated for having gotten him this far and told that most of the things I was noticing seemed to be a sign of aging. Still, today feels like a reminder that I'm very much new with this. Jasper was my first chameleon, and my first reptile, really. I hope I gave him as good a life as possible, despite knowing I've made many mistakes along the way.
So my question to everyone is really about the stuff in his enclosure. There's a live pothos, which is doing "just okay" in my opinion, a set of wooden branches, some of those black bendy artificial vines, fake plastic vines, some fake plants etc... My thinking was I would dispose of most of it for sanitary reasons, especially the most porous stuff like the wood. Do you all think the fake vines/fake plants could be soaked and cleaned and sanitized for re-use someday or would it be safer to just dispose of them along with everything else and basically gut the cage? Also, in terms of the floor and sides of the enclosure (it's an all screen 48" dragonstrand) how should I go about cleaning everything?
Thanks again and thank you for all the help everyone has offered over the years. I have just barely started grieving Jasper, so my plan is to clean up his cage and take a break for a few months and maybe in the future adopt another after some more research and adjustments, but too soon to really think about that.
