It's been quite some time since I've visited the forums -- just wanted to say hello and let anybody who remembers me know that I'm still interested in monitors. Unfortunately, I haven't acquired any new ones. Maybe once a raise comes along and I can move to a bigger place, that will change!
My nile, Anhur (the Egyptian god of the hunt, if you're curious) is still alive and well over two years later. He has really mellowed out quite a bit -- not that I don't get the occasional tail-whip or hiss, of course. But he's slowly growing more tolerant of me... when I enter the room, he simply eyes me suspiciously rather than immediately darting for a hiding spot.
He's also much better about feeding. For a while after I brought him home, he wouldn't so much as poke his head out for an hour after I dropped crickets in and closed the enclosure up. Now I feed him adult mice by hand, and he's really quite polite about taking them.
I don't like to put him in the bathtub (I'm more worried about him catching people germs than me catching lizard germs), but he seems to love it, and here are two shots of what happened when I tried to take him back out of the tub one evening. By the way, these pictures were taken over two years ago (10/11/01 in fact) -- he's considerably larger now, and I don't handle him without leather gloves and long sleeves anymore.
(A good tolerance for pain is important with niles!)
Sorry for such old pictures (I suspect some of the old-school forum-goers have seen them already). I'll try to take some new ones soon.
