I was hoping for advice on a Meller's that only has one eye. It came into rescue 3 weeks ago from a pet store raid due to serious neglect/abuse of numerous animals. Appears to be a sub-adult wild caught. I took him/her (we refer to it as a him) into the vet the day after pickup - full physical revealed a ruptured right eye that was infected and had proven now to be obliterated along with rostral abrasions that are through the skin exposing the SQ layers, serious dehydration and obvious malnutrition. In the last three weeks, we've been doing SQ fluids, Fortaz, treating the rostral abrasions topically, and trying to get weight on him. The problem we are running across is that that his aim when trying to eat or drink is horrible. He misses the target by several inches each time. He also cannot figure out how to drink from the drip system, tries to lick water off the leaves and misses them completely.

We've been working on trust with this guy so that I can assist him with feedings/hydration. In the last week we've made a lot of improvements in feeding - he has figured out that while I hold the cricket in the tongs, he can just take it (it takes several attempts, but he manages). I also started offering water via syringe and he figured it out, but then also figured out how to actually drink from the glass of water I had there to syringe him.

So the questions I have - any advice on how to safely leave an accessible dish of water in the cage with him? He is currently in a screen chameleon cage - smaller than it should be, but we needed to be able to catch him without a lot of stress for the meds etc, as well as monitoring physical condition and stool production. Also, the other thing we're having trouble with is getting him to take any food item except crickets. I want to start getting onto a varied diet, but anything offered other than crickets is totally balked at and then he'll refuse to eat at all for a day or so.

Anyway, thanks for any advice anyone can offer about this - I want to make sure we give this guy the best we can!

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]