Update on Ben (a little long). (cornsnake)
So I've been gone for a while, and a lot's happened. If your interested,
read on.
Zak and Sara (my two bearded dragons) are getting big. They are tons of fun
and all of my friends are in love with them.
Zeus (my iguana) is happy in his new 7 foot long, 6.5 foot tall, 4 foot deep
cage. Temperatures are just right and humidity is stable at around 75% at
all times in his cage.
Ruby (my albino cornsnake) has had some interesting adventures. After
escaping her cage (when my roommate did not replace the lid), she fell into
my dresser drawer where she spent the night. A week later, she figured out
how to get around the lid when it was secure, and escaped again. She got a
little farther this time. Around the edge of my room is a molding placed
against the bottom of the wall. It's held on by glue, and in one small
section it was beginning to seperate from the wall. You can tell where this
story is going. Ruby got completely glued to this thing. Horrible
nightmarish incident. She was there overnight (at least I think. She
wasn't there the first time I checked it), and by the time I came across
her, she had tried so hard to get loose that all the skin around her frontal
section had been stretched loose. So me and a friend worked diligently to
slowly remove the glue from the molding (covering the glue with dirt
wherever she wasn't stuck so she couldn't get restuck), and immediately to
the Vet's emergency hours. $107 and 24 hrs later, the doctor said she was
fine and that she would just have some loose skin for a while. The cage
then got a bungee cord around it, ensuring no more escapes. So the
scenario: Less than a week later, and it's 4 am. I'm delivering the last
pizza of the night when I get a call from my roommate. "Ben, I think you
should come home, our house is on fire". Great news. So I pull a U-turn
and hightail it straight home. Turns out Ruby's UTH had malfunctioned and
caught the dresser she (and the heater) was on top of. Dresser burned a
little, dropped an ember into a pile of dirty clothes, and set a good 1/2 of
my room on fire. It was so hot that the pedals on the ceiling fan had
drooped perpendicular to the ceiling. Of course, Ruby's cage was DIRECTLY
next to the fire. The cage exploded from the heat, and when the
firefighters first saw the cage, they told me she didn't make it.
Hysterical, I had a friend take a look while I removed my other animals from
a recently smoke-filled house and temporarily relocated them. My friend
went into my room and retrieves a shaken, yet perfectly healthy Ruby. And
they say CATS have nine lives. Bah.
-Ben
--
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~bdw9714
(get rid of BUSH to email me)
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