Change of Events

Tile lady couldn't arrange child care so couldn't make it this morning, which suited me just fine. Slept till the afternoon *yawns*. This morning got a ding dong from the courier. My frozen rats arrived with something that I've been keenly awaiting for! Will post piccies later. :D

Tick Tock...

I'm having my tiles professionally cleaned around 9 AM today. It's past 5 AM and I'm still here brooding dark rings around my eyes. I don't think this is going to go down well.

Beware of Snakes

Just saw on The Insider that Will Smith & his wife lost one of their dogs (an Alaskan Malamute which happens to be my favourite breed) to a rattlesnake bite (more correctly 3 bites). The famous Caesar Millan, aka the Dog Whisperer who is also a long term friend of theirs helped train the rest of their dogs to be aware of rattlesnakes and to stay clear when they're in close proximity of one. I'd love to train my puppy to stay away from my snakes. She's almost identical to an oversized rat.

My Poor Rat :(

Pinky :D
Originally uploaded by Cotton Bunny

My poor rat just vomited in two places. I found out the usual way, wet foot test (arghhh). I don't understand why of all places she had to do it in my bedroom. :(

Cleaning the carpet in the middle of the night seems to have become my specialty as she's not fully toilet trained yet. These days it seems like her training is progressing backwards. Damn you tiny pea brain *sobs*.

Shopping List

Some things I'd like to have/need:

• Hygrometer
• Snake hook
• NEC T10 light tubes
• Another twin probe thermometer to double check
  

N. Amyae

N. Amyae
Originally uploaded by Cotton Bunny

Still too early to tell the sex of my baby Amyae. Wanna take a guess? :)

Terrible lighting + after I domestically violated my camera the last time it hasn't been able to focus properly. :(

Introducing My Quails

Here's my two pairs of gorgeous quails. Having kept a pair of lovebirds in my room before, I was quite put off having any type of birds for the rest of my life. They were messy, extremely loud, and have I mentioned they were horrendously loud? Anyway, I suddenly had the urge (as I do) to start breeding chickens for eggs as eggs around here are just not fresh enough. So, taking into account that I have very limited space, I opted for small chicky variations such as bantams. Then I decided on silkies because I've always loved their comical look. Then after some googling, I decided to go even smaller, resulting in the decision to start keeping and breeding quails. That way, I can satisfy the hunger of both my snakes, my beardies (the occasional eggs) and myself. Thanks to my impulsive personality, I wasted no time in accidentally going into a pet store and accidentally purchasing two pairs of quails without much thought. I didn't even have a setup ready, or any idea how to keep them properly (apart from my limited knowledge gained during my search for the right type of chickens). So everything was irresponsibly done after they arrived home.

Quite thrilled with the fact that their calls are actually not annoying as that was my main concern. If kept indoors, the smell will eventually get to you, so I moved them to the balcony, where I can't smell them even with the lid completely opened. Initially I was worried about the temperature being too low outside, but they've proven to be quite hardy little things. They do eat a lot and spoil their water quickly so in that sense they're not totally zero to maintain.

Arghhhh-vabator

I've been trying to set up my two hovabators for a while now. As it's my first time using an incubator I wanted it to be as perfect as possible (coz I'm sure something else will go wrong). One is a still air model for reptile eggs, and the other is a fan forced model for quail eggs. I'm having problems stabilizing the still air at 29 degrees. I have them both in my enclosed work room downstairs which has limited draft and temperature fluctuation. I've just tried the "turn knob and remove dust from wafer" technique so lets see how we go. Optimally I'd like to achieve this:

• Still air model: 29 degrees celcius
• Fan forced model: 37.5 +- 0.5 degrees celcius, 60% humidity

As I'm quite new to the prospects of dealing with humidity, it's slightly overwhelming. :(

Found a few good links for quail incubation tips. Here's one.

Pasta :: The Noodle in the middle

Pasta :: Striped Jungle Python
Originally uploaded by Cotton Bunny

Finally took some piccies of Pasta. She's my absolute favourite snake. Extremely placid but feeds like a hawk, and of course, stunningly beautiful. So far she's the only snake using the stick thingy I installed. I think this may be due to the fact that she isn't as heavy weighted as the others so can hold onto it well enough. The others seem to slip off from their weight + the smooth surface. I might sand it a little to give it more grip and see how that goes. :)

New Enclosures

Atlas :: Jungle Python
Originally uploaded by Cotton Bunny

Due to finishing exams and having a good break from work, I made some more enclosures. Isn't the floor boards looking sexy? :)

Trick with the Invisible Crickets

I went to the pet store today as I was nearly out of crickets and wouldn't have enough till my bulk order of crix show up. They seemed to be out of smalls, but "luckily" (just wait) I found a box of smalls on the top shelf, slightly out of sight. Well, out of sight for people my height anyway. When I got home, I set up a nice tub with gut load and cricket gel (no not gel made out of crickets! These are the water crystal thingies that works really well as a water source), then tipped the crix in. Out popped a few, then a few... a few then no more dropped... and when I say a few, I mean really "few". If I sat there for a good few seconds I could easily have counted how many were in the box. They costed me $6.90. It almost seems like I paid $1.00 for each of them. Total Grrrrr.

Eh.

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

My Beardie Houdinied >___<

Today was quite cool but okay for a winter day. I thought it would be lovely if I took my beardies out to sun. I filled up two tubs with luke warm water, placed them outside right by the side of my balcony so they could get some sun and left them to swim for a while. When I came back outside to check on them, one of my bigger girls had disappeared. After a couple of minutes I became frantic (I have a bit of a delayed reaction sometimes) because knowing their great sense of height, she most likely would have jumped off the balcony and pizza-ed right then and there. I crawled down on all fours and searched the grounds but of course she was nowhere to be found. I thought about sticking up fliers all over the estate but I didn't think the people around here would appreciate someone keeping "venomous dragons" in the same vicinity as their house. I came inside, got the keys and was ready to bolt out the door when I saw her happily hanging off one of the screens. She was quite unhappy and was very offended when I tried to calmly coax her off (get off the friggin screen you *beep*). Yes, I've learnt my lesson! Never ever leave your animals unsupervised no matter for how short a time, and never ever trust they can't get out of anything or anywhere (with that being said, I don't think I've blogged about the time I lost three snakies all at once...)! >___<

I turned Comic

I turned Comic
Originally uploaded by Cotton Bunny

Boring photos are a thing of the past. Nowadays, infants and people with half a brain can do extremely cool modifications to their piccies with the right programs. From an aesthetic point of view, the place I chose to insert the watermark cannot be any worst, but I really can't be bothered at the moment.

Preparationz

Due to the possibility that my castelnaui could be gravid, I went out and got a few things today (mostly following Sparticus' suggestions):

Bunnings:

• Peat moss
• Perlite
• Vermiculite (really only needed perlite, but I thought what the heck I'll get some anyway)
  
• Digital thermometer

Campbell's warehouse for business owners:

• Takeaway containers (750mL I think) & Lids (I wasn't sure which ones to get, there were smaller standard ones but I thought these ones would hold eggs of any size)

Betta Electrical:

• Digital scale
  

Crazy Clark's:

• Plastic buckets to put the mosses and lite's in
• 100 Piece Kitchen Container Set $25 (I figured there has to be at least one that's the right size for the laying container)
• Some cheap river rocks to ornament the enclosure

I did find a container within the set that seemed kind of suitable for laying. I'm just not sure it is quite wide enough. The good thing with it is that it already has a hole in the lid (easy access to pour out what ever you're supposed to keep in it). I put a good amount of peat moss in it, wet it down and put it in the enclosure. I coaxed (plucked and planted) my gecko into it to let her know it's there and she sat in it for a fair while. I know she'll find it herself when she's ready to lay but being myself, I couldn't wait.