Well, its an old story heard, I am sure, many times before. But I was wondering if there was anything anyone could think that could do.

Here's the story:

I live in Canada, and a couple of years ago I found a small brown anole had somehow arrived in my house, an unexpected visitor during the Christmas holidays. At the time she was emaciated and scared, but still energetic, and I nursed her back to health.

She quickly put on weight, gained strength and over the last while she has become a very good friend: always energetic, always alert, and always appearing happy to see me after I had spent a long day at work.

But now, over the last two days things have taken a turn for the worse. Right up until three days ago, she was happy and hunting. Normal (or seemingly normal) defecation, regular appetite on her diet of small crickets, no obvious lack of energy.

But now she's gone off her food, and seems always to be either sleeping or half asleep. Two days ago she seemed happy and unstressed (good colour, no obvious fear behaviour etc.) but slept most of the day away. She'd took her water but didn't hunt at all. Yesterday, she was still sleepy. Spent most of her day unconcious, and briefly when she looked like she was trying to go hunting (angling herself, aligning herself to aim after a fresh cricket) she instead fell asleep draped over the branch she was pearched on, almost mid-pounce.

I did the weekly cage cleaning last night, and there were a couple of errant older crickets left as well as the ones from the last feeding that apparently didn't get eaten. I escorted the majority of them out of the cage, cleaned up the poop, replaced the substrait, fluffed the plants and trimmed back the overgrowth of vegitation. Although she was sluggish, she seemed reasonably well behaved and mobile throughout the entire proceedure.

Today she's even less mobile than yesterday. Sleeping all the time. Her last defication was a small one mid-yesterday. She's not touched any of her foods. And now she's showing signs of stress.

She's still taking her water from her dripper, but sleeps almost the entire day long now.

I know she's probably just old. After all I have no solid idea how old she was when she arrived, and I've looked after her for some time now. But the suddeness of the ailment makes me wonder if is this some sort of treatible ailment? Is there anything I can possibly do?

I tried today using tweasers to hold a small fresh cricket in front of her. She jumped up one branch to get a better view, but then just sat there and went dark and closed her eyes. All of this attention seems to be stressing her out more than helping, and she's spend most of the day today quietly sitting up against the back wall of the cage on a soft leaf, asleep once again.

I could try to feed her some baby food? Place drops of it on her nose, so she licks it off? But will this help? What could be wrong? Or more relevantly, what could be wrong that I could do anything about?

As far as I am aware there is no herp vet anywhere near where I live, and I know that people tend to view little creatures like brown anoles as "disposable pets", and as such medical treatments are few and far between. But any adivice or any way imaginable to return the happy vitality of my beloved little friend would be much appreciated.

If there is nothing I can do, then at least I have had the privilage of spending what little time I have had with a good friend.

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