Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I don't like to pick favorites within my collection of pets, but as far as lizards go you couldn't get a much cooler lizard than my beloved rescued Mali Uromastyx that passed away in her sleep Monday.

The reason I am posting this here is because when I originally took her in I got a lot of great help from Shvar and Robyn, without which she wouldn't have lived a day. It was a little over five years ago when I took her in, two days before christmas, and it was a real rescue. As in, I went to a persons house where I knew she was being kept and they surrendered her to me. She had third degree burn scars covering 25% of her back (where the only thing that was left was white patches of melted scales, even until the day she passed away) and from the beginning she was suffering from pretty acute renal failure. She had liver disease which caused her to retain water and look incredibly fat, even up until the last few days when she was in actuality very emaciated.

With all of the abuse she went through I always marveled at the way she reacted to my fiance and I. She would come to the door and stare at us whenever we opened the enclosure, and even though this is anthropomorphism, she always seemed to really appreciate everything we did for her, like building her a new enclosure, giving her lots of dirt to dig in, and a nice hot basking spot. We used to watch her sit under the basking light for hours with her head held up high, watching us at the same time. She always looked like she was looking us in the eyes.

There were a lot of ups and downs. At one point a couple of years in she went drastically down hill and was fighting for survival (her recovery from that ailment was what kept me optimistic in her final days), then a year or two later she deposited a clutch of over a dozen unfertilized eggs.

I'm sorry for the long message, but My fiance and I are having a very hard time dealing with this because it all happened so fast and I really just wanted to thank everyone here that helped me out so much. Based on her past owners' records we are able to safely assume that she was very close to, if not over 20 years of age.

Maybe in a few weeks when I am able to deal with this better I will post some pictures of her when I got her, the enclosure she was being kept in when I rescued her (a 10 gallon, feces-laden, hot rock heated nightmare) and her just months before she passed on.

Thanks everyone, and sorry again for the long post.

Wow. What a sweet story. You gave her a long good life. I know you both must miss her. They do look in your eyes, don't they.

Thanks for your support. It's funny how hard it is for people that have never kept reptiles to understand how attached you become. At least she isn't suffering anymore. Toward the end I could tell she wasn't feeling well, as you could imagine.

Thanks

Lets think of all the time she felt good.

In my experience as a nurse no one feels good the end unless they on a morphine drip. I'm not sure the reptilian brain has much comprehension of suffering. Most of suffering is how you feel about the suffering. She was among her people in a good place.