Syzdekistan

We lost one of our beloved pets over the weekend. Fluffy was a female Australian bearded dragon (Pagona vitticeps). She was pretty big, about 18 inches long, and like most bearded dragons, very tame and easy to handle. I bought Fluffy from a friend who was moving back in November 1997 so I had her for about 9 years. She was an adult when I got her so I don’t know how old she was.

About four years ago, Fluffy started to show some signs of blindness. She normally ate crickets and leafy green vegetables and she begin to have trouble catching crickets. Hand feeding 20-30 crickets every other day was nearly impossible to do without getting a painful misguided nip so I began to feed her Madagascar hissing cockroaches which at two to three inches long were easy for her to see and catch.

After about a year, her vision had deteriorated enough where I had to hold the roaches with a long forceps in a certain area to the left of her nose where she could see them and feed. About a year ago, she began to refuse cockroaches. My colony of breeding roaches had long been utilized as food (Hot Wife was quite thankful of Fluffy’s depredations on the roach colony) so I was somewhat glad not to have to buy roaches anymore. Fluffy seemed perfectly content to eat wet cat food and leafy greens both of which she could still manage to eat on her own. Every few days I would place her in a shallow pan of water and she would drink.

About a month ago, her appetite waned and she slowly stopped eating and stopped moving around her cage. I would place her under her heat lamp and she would still drink. We were out of town on the weekend. I had checked her Friday morning fully expecting her to be gone. She was limp and very thin but she still noticed me with her limited vision and feebly moved her head. I held her for a while, said some goodbyes, and I put her under her heat lamp. When I checked on her on Sunday she had died. I was really amazed that she lived as long as she did with her limited vision and I think she had a comfortable life despite her illness.

You may wonder how she got the name Fluffy. When Nancy and I were dating, I had a menagerie of unnamed reptiles. She insisted that I name them. I told her that it would be silly to name a spiny, scaly, cricket-eating beast something cute like Fluffy. Well, the name stuck. We’ll miss you Fluffy.