Yikes! Nasty injuries on a sad little gecko!

[purplemuffin]

Figured I'd share this rather frustrating and awful update. I'll share the story and a picture of the little girl.


My boyfriend leaves for work at 5pm, before he left he checked the animals, all was well, everyone was fine and in their own separate cages. He closed the door to his room and left. He got back home by 9:30pm, where he saw a disaster had happened during that short period of time. One of our leopard geckos was in our giant male leopard gecko's cage, and she was very badly injured and lost a lot of blood.

Their terrariums are always closed and locked, and that was the case that night as well. When Nathan came home however they were slid open barely. We don't know what happened, if a family member or a sibling's friend came into his room and opened the tanks, if someone put her in the wrong tank by accident, or if a cat had grabbed her and dropped her in there, I don't know. Everyone swears they didn't touch her, but it is still possible they opened the tanks, they don't seem as determined to say they didn't. The point was not to cast blame, the point was to get her some vet help for the poor girl. We still had a serious discussion with everyone, and after they saw the damage everyone seemed to 'get it'. Trust me.. I was rather furious when I found out this had happened


We cleaned her up and took her to the vet. We thought she had a broken leg but thank goodness she didn't. She DID end up snapping all her muscles on her back leg and the vet said she might never be able to walk normally on it again. She mostly had some severe bite wounds, the worst one is on her belly(not seen in the picture, didn't want to stress her out more than she had to be) that took out a large a large bit of skin--think armpit to center of chest and the hole is a complete circle.. that shows some exposed muscle

She also broke a toe which looks like it will fall off soon and the tip of her tail is gone.


Bubba, the giant male who attacked her lost a few toes, but is otherwise perfectly fine.


We took her to the vet who gave her some medication and gave us some medication to give her. We are supposed to apply medicine to the wounds every day after a warm soak. We are supposed to go back in a week to see how well her wounds are healing, and if she needs more antibiotics, and once we get to that point we will see how things go.

Here is a picture of the sad little girl during her bath--You can see how the cuts are closed against the skin, they were folded open when we found her, ugh, so awful! Hopefully they will heal quickly! The image doesn't show exactly how deep the wounds are since the skin is folded back over them, but I'm sure you can imagine what it looks like. Not fun!



That back left leg doesn't work, it's awful to watch her crawl around on it. Doesn't seem to slow her down, she's a trooper for sure!

Poor girl HATES the medicine, I'm sure it must be very sensitive, but it'll keep her from getting infected. :/


I'll keep updating as she heals, hopefully she will be better in a jiffy! As of right now she spends a lot of time sleeping on the warm side of her cage, but when she is awake she is rather alert and active. She is still interested in drinking, but no interest in eating just yet. Understandable--she's gone through quite an ordeal.


She along with the other geckos will be staying at my house, I do school from home(online college campus this year) and I don't have a job while I'm in school so I am home more often to take care of her wounds, as well as keep anything like this from happening again(and get them out of that house, they have caused enough trouble for us and our animals!)

Hoping for some well wishes on a speedy recovery for the little lady, and also just wanted to share this story with people. Geckos CAN do quite a bit of damage to each other, and it doesn't take much time unattended for something awful to happen. Such a frustrating situation. Shouldn't have happened. So mad that it did. But at least she's alive and the damage wasn't any worse than it already was!

[Jessica Loesch]

So sorry To hear hope she pulls through.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Tapatalk

[JLC]

Awww, poor little dear! It sounds like she is in excellent hands, though, and receiving the best care she could hope for.

And hopefully, if a person really is responsible for allowing that to happen, whether or not they ever fess up, I hope they see and learn within their heart that sometimes what seems like a simple little bit of irresponsibility can lead to very serious consequences.

[purplemuffin]

Thanks.. I hope that whoever is responsible realizes it, and I think they do. The whole family is crushed over the situation. Speckle is the smallest animal we own, she's our family's little baby! It's devastating for everyone to see her injured in any way, especially since it could have been avoided altogether!

[Clementine_3]

Poor baby! Hopefully her leg will be OK when all is said and done, the cuts should heal well without any trouble. Keep us updated on her progress.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

[kevinb]

Poor girl. males can be really horrible creatures.....no matter the species.

[purplemuffin]

Got a few new pictures while giving her some medicine this morning




You can sort of see the wound on her chest, that swollen bit beneath her arm..

And this is an extremely blurry picture of the wound itself--



You can see that it is a very difficult spot to get to!! With it being on her tummy it makes the chance of infection more worrisome, so I gotta get the medicine on her, but she does not like that one bit!

[Clementine_3]

Ouch, that does look nasty!

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk

[purplemuffin]

Today was nice, there was no bloody spots on the paper towel this morning and the wounds look like they are closing. She is still sleeping a lot, and shows no interest in food and little interest in water. She's just laying as close to her heat pad as possible. I expect her to be a bit slow while she heals, and she's allowed all the time to rest she needs, but when would be a time where I should be concerned if she is still lethargic? She's usually so active, and is our "warrior/hunter", so it is so sad and strange to see her like this!