Could you be specific? Has he eaten anything since you took custody of him?



He's excited by the prey but something is wrong. He is probably looking for ants instead, or the crickets are too fast for him. Try pinching their back legs so they cannot get away as easily.



I recommend staying away from any kind of "worm" at this point. Lack of experience, the fact that this is a juvenile, and the balance of opinion being that he should probably hibernate soon; dictate feeding of larvae is not the best course. It is not the most healthy food for them, takes to much effort to digest, and slows down their metabolism.

Crickets are bad enough, since these lizards normally eat a high number of ants, but at least can be gotten in a very small size.

Besides, this horned lizard is a little young, and wax worms tend to be a little large for a small horned lizard. The wrong size prey can also cause an impaction and kill him. Though it less likely with waxworms, this is one of the many reasons why you should not experiment too much intially without consultation. Many new people kill horned lizards quickly by doing the wrong thing.



The "coating" you see on his eyes is probably the nictitating membrane which protects the eye. His eyes may be irritated or scratched from debris, and there may still be debris in his eye, and he's keeping the membrane over the eye because it hurts. They do raise the blood pressure in their cranium to bulge their eyes out to remove debris, sometimes by squirting blood. Try rinsing the eye with sterile saline that contains no other chemicals. There is a trick to catching them with their eyes open and getting the eye rinsed. They tend to close their eyes upon trying to rinse, so it takes some patience and timing.






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"A man that should call everything by it's right name, would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy." The Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax 1912,246

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