Going on vacation, please help.

Hey all,

I have a dilemma similar to another thread in this forum.
At the end of July my family and I are going on a 7 day cruise.
I have never left my Smiley before except to go to work or maybe spend the night because of business.
I was going to have a good friend of mine watch her at his house because he has taken care of many reptiles before in his life. The problem I am facing with him now is the fact that he just got a new Chamaeleon which is only 2 inches long and was very very excited in taking care of her.
Well long story short he ended up meeting this new woman and spent so much time on the phone with her because she lives in another state that he did not give the proper attention to the chameleon so she died.
He told me that he would still watch my Smiley but he would not be able to give her the same attention he would had he not met this new woman.
Because of the circumstances I am not going to allow him to watch her.
Now my wife's parents are staying over to watch the house the dog and cat, but I'm pretty sure that they are not going to go anywhere near Smiley herself because they're not comfortable with reptiles.
I might be able to get one of them to change the water in her bowl and then I can put a bowl full of mealworms in there for her to eat while I'm gone.
The only thing that I'm not going to be able to do is teach them how to clean her tile when she goes poopy on it. I'm very diligent when it comes to keeping her viv clean I am pretty sure they won't touch that.

If anybody has any ideas or think this is okay please let me know so that I can prepare for this

I thank you all for your help over the past few months to a year. I really appreciate everyone.

Robert




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Yea, your friend doesn't sound super smart. It's not hard to feed and mist a chameleon daily (it should take all of like 30 minutes total daily) so if he can't even do that...

I wouldn't worry about it. As long as he has water and his heat pad is plugged in, he'll be totally fine a few days without food or with a couple poops in the corner. Filling up his feeding bowl is a good idea, and should last him a few days. But unless you're willing to pay a professional, it's hard to force non-reptile people to do things they just really have no interest in doing.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Reptiles, especially ones adapted to living in the desert, are extremely hardy and good at surviving. I've been on many trips and as long as they're left with water, they've always been just fine. If you have someone coming to take care of other stuff, you could just ask them to look in the viv and make sure everything is okay and call you if there is a problem. A few poops left for a week won't hurt a leo, especially because they poop in a corner usually(Unlike my snakes who poop in their water bowls!). And don't forget that reptiles use far less energy than mammals. A week without food probably wouldn't even cause her to drop a gram of weight, especially if you leave a bowl of mealworms in there.

My opinion is that she'll be fine. Mine always have been. =)

Olympus said:

Yea, your friend doesn't sound super smart. It's not hard to feed and mist a chameleon daily (it should take all of like 30 minutes total daily) so if he can't even do that...

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I've never had a chameleon but my wife said she wanted one back in January. So my serious question is: does it really take 30 minutes/day for "maintaining" a chameleon? (She doesn't have that much time left in her day...). Or is it "30 seconds"?? (She might have 30 seconds/day to spare..lol)

Thanks for all the replies. I'm glad to know that she's going to be okay. As far as contacting me that's not going to be possible because we will be on a cruise ship. I am not sure if we will get phone service in the countries that we will be visiting. I will talk to Verizon and see about getting on the international plan just for that week.
She has a heat pad, a big bowl of water, and I could probably get quite a bit of mealworms in there for her. She also has an overhead heat lamp that I leave on 24 seven that she seems to enjoy very much.


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tb144050 said:

I've never had a chameleon but my wife said she wanted one back in January. So my serious question is: does it really take 30 minutes/day for "maintaining" a chameleon? (She doesn't have that much time left in her day...). Or is it "30 seconds"?? (She might have 30 seconds/day to spare..lol)

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It depends. If you do things by hand (especially the misting) then yes, it might be 20-30 minutes out of your whole day, give or take. Because you'd have to mist at least a couple minutes at a time several times a day. But if you invest in an automatic misting system, like a Mistking or an Aquazamp, then it takes care of the watering for you on a set schedule. So then it's a matter of feeding the chameleon, and refilling the misting system reservoir when it needs it, etc.

The more automated your set-up, the less you have to mess with them every day (like hooking up lights and water to timers, for example). Like, I've been really sick the last couple weeks on the couch so in that time I've gone into their room just a couple times a week, just enough to refill their water reservoirs, feed them (they're adults, so they don't eat daily), throw fresh food into the insect bins, and make sure everyone is doing well. If I didn't have everything connected to timers I'd have to go to their room daily several times a day to mist them and turn lights on/off.

There are great blogs and forums out there for chameleons, I highly recommend checking info out beforehand and then deciding whether you're up for the commitment or not They're awesome but not for everyone.