I've had some drama in the Lizard Palace of late. I noticed a couple of mice in there about a month or so ago and I thought that they might have come in via the leaf mulch that I had raked up off the edges of Martin's Road. I searched for them but didn't find them again, so I put mouse-eradication activities towards the back of my mind. However, a week or so later I discovered to my horror that one of my western blue tongues had a badly swollen arm and some small bite marks in its arm pit. The vet didn't really have much experience with reptiles and didn't know that reptiles don't produce liquid puss so the needle that she was sticking in its arm to draw out puss was ineffectual and possibly damaging (but to be fair on the vet, neither did I at that stage). She gave me an antibiotic to give to it daily but unfortunately it died a few days later. Now I am still not sure whether it was a mouse, a rat - yes I have now seen rats in there at night, or another of the blue tongues. Now, even though I kept a 'group' of between 6 and 12 eastern blue tongues in an outdoor enclosure when I was a kid, I have been largely unaware of the aggression that blue tongues inflict on each other. So, much so that I have had to separate my two blotched blue tongues (I am hoping that the aggression has been mating-related and I will enjoy the pitter-patter, pitter-patter of little feet soon).
Anyway, I have been setting mouse and rat traps and have managed a few dead rodents but I was completely surprised by this capture. i have since realised of course that the rodents can gain access through the chicken wire mesh of the Lizard Palace roof from the overhanging branches of shrubs but the toad could have only been raked up in the leaf litter. I also saw to my horror last weekend one of my baby Tasmanian blotched blue tongues (well not so baby anymore, they are about 20cm long) carting around a very dead, squashed cane toad skin in its mouth, which I promptly removed from its mouth. And they're just blue tongues!
No comments:
Post a Comment