Chewbecca
www.ellaslead.com
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- 1,772
- Location
- 60 miles south of Chicago
I was making my rounds with feeding the hatchlings last night on the rack.
Anyone who has a rack system KNOWS how routine it is. You fill dishes, go from box to box and place dishes in.
Hatchlings usually aren't ones for being very social, so the process is quick.
I made it down to hatchling #7 last night. I had made it through 6 already.
I opened up his box, noticed he was the only one who didn't run out of his hide like a mad man, so I placed his dish into his box. I went to clue him in that I had put food in his box, by checking his humid hide.
NO hatchling.
I lift up the paper towel.
NO hatchling.
So, thinking I must STILL be over looking things, I run upstairs with the box and tell my husband that he'd better find a hatchling in there or he lost one.
I said this because he cleaned cages the night before.
We start searching downstairs. We are looking in every nook and cranny we can find.
NO hatchling.
I'm worried sick because this was one of my favorite hatchlings because it was the only one NOT to hiss at me. And it seemed real sweet.
Anyway, I tell my husband (after searching for a long time) that we should leave out a dish of food for it. So, he takes one of the small gladware containers that we use to weigh them in (which are too tall for them to climb out of), uses a long lid of sorts as a ramp, and he places mealies in this container.
I did not have high hopes that we'd ever see that baby again. I knew he couldn't have climbed the stairs to get upstairs, so I knew he had to be downstairs. But I had done laundry yesterday, and was picking clothes up off the floor very fast to put them in the machine.
So, I kept having horrifying thoughts about how I probably accidentally grabbed him up in a pile of clothes. I was so upset.
My husband woke up this morning.
The little stinker was in the gladware container.
He was caught.
This is one hatchling that I'm going to keep.
We're pretty sure that he MUST HAVE escaped out of one of the air holes that my husband drilled. It was a tad bigger than the other holes on the other cages.
It's the ONLY WAY it could have gotten out.
I thought for sure my husband must've forgotten to put him back in his cage after cleaning them the night before, but after he cleaned the cages, he gave them a roach nymph a piece in a bowl.
When I removed that dish and replaced it with a dish of mealies yesterday, the roach was gone. So it had to have eaten it which means my husband had to have put him back into his cage.
AND there was poop in his cage.
SO! The stinker ate, pooped, and then bolted.
We fixed the problem with the holes, and hopefully no more escapees.
I'M SO HAPPY HE HAS BEEN FOUND!
Anyone who has a rack system KNOWS how routine it is. You fill dishes, go from box to box and place dishes in.
Hatchlings usually aren't ones for being very social, so the process is quick.
I made it down to hatchling #7 last night. I had made it through 6 already.
I opened up his box, noticed he was the only one who didn't run out of his hide like a mad man, so I placed his dish into his box. I went to clue him in that I had put food in his box, by checking his humid hide.
NO hatchling.
I lift up the paper towel.
NO hatchling.
So, thinking I must STILL be over looking things, I run upstairs with the box and tell my husband that he'd better find a hatchling in there or he lost one.
I said this because he cleaned cages the night before.
We start searching downstairs. We are looking in every nook and cranny we can find.
NO hatchling.
I'm worried sick because this was one of my favorite hatchlings because it was the only one NOT to hiss at me. And it seemed real sweet.
Anyway, I tell my husband (after searching for a long time) that we should leave out a dish of food for it. So, he takes one of the small gladware containers that we use to weigh them in (which are too tall for them to climb out of), uses a long lid of sorts as a ramp, and he places mealies in this container.
I did not have high hopes that we'd ever see that baby again. I knew he couldn't have climbed the stairs to get upstairs, so I knew he had to be downstairs. But I had done laundry yesterday, and was picking clothes up off the floor very fast to put them in the machine.
So, I kept having horrifying thoughts about how I probably accidentally grabbed him up in a pile of clothes. I was so upset.
My husband woke up this morning.
The little stinker was in the gladware container.
He was caught.
This is one hatchling that I'm going to keep.
We're pretty sure that he MUST HAVE escaped out of one of the air holes that my husband drilled. It was a tad bigger than the other holes on the other cages.
It's the ONLY WAY it could have gotten out.
I thought for sure my husband must've forgotten to put him back in his cage after cleaning them the night before, but after he cleaned the cages, he gave them a roach nymph a piece in a bowl.
When I removed that dish and replaced it with a dish of mealies yesterday, the roach was gone. So it had to have eaten it which means my husband had to have put him back into his cage.
AND there was poop in his cage.
SO! The stinker ate, pooped, and then bolted.
We fixed the problem with the holes, and hopefully no more escapees.
I'M SO HAPPY HE HAS BEEN FOUND!
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