Fresh Shed from Cleo the Cali King

[alittleFREE]

Unfortunately, I have some bad news to share about Cleo.


It seems she’s developed an RI. Last night I happened to look over and I saw her out drinking, so I paused to watch her. Then she started rubbing her face on things and proceeded to cough up water. I thought that was weird, so I took her out. For about 5 minutes I held her and looked her over and everything seemed normal, so I thought maybe I startled her mid-drink and she just had some water in her mouth. If only. Right as I was about to put her up, she made a very loud gargling noise and spit up more water. That’s when I knew something was up. For the next 10 minutes or so (I’m estimating, it may have been shorter, but it felt like a long time) she kept doing this off and on, with the liquid coming out becoming more viscous than plain water. She also periodically would have bubbles coming out of her nose. I could feel the rumbling when she would spit up the water.

Obviously I knew this was not good and signs of an RI - and a progressed one, at that. Luckily I had a spare enclosure, so I quickly put together a quarantine setup and got her in that. As this was late last night, all the vets were closed, so I called first thing this morning. Unfortunately, the soonest they can see me due to the reptile specialist’s work hours is Thursday. In the meantime, I have bumped her temps up and will be watching her closely. I’ve called another vet to see if they can get me in sooner but haven’t heard back.

The sliver of good news is that despite these rather concerning symptoms, she is still physically strong and her tongue is flicking and all of that. She has been eating and otherwise behaving normally. The only thing that, in hindsight, was a clue was that she has been hanging out in her warm hide a lot the past week or so. She does that when she’s going into shed so that’s what I assumed it was.... but now I believe she had been trying to boost her metabolism and fight off the infection.

I’m baffled as to how it progressed to this without me realizing; she’s in my living room, so I’m looking at her constantly and I get her out very frequently. As I’ve had her for years and never had an issue, I think the culprit is probably the bedding.... I switched from paper to Coco Husk a few months ago because I wanted her to be able to burrow. When I cleaned out her tank last night after this debacle I noticed it was fairly dusty. Ugh. I should have been keeping it more moist, I guess, but I didn’t want crazy humidity in there because kings don’t need it. I was worried about scale rot from wet bedding. Regardless, it’s 100% my fault, which sucks.

Send her good vibes please. I love her to pieces and would never want to lose her.




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