Pi Reptiles

Well, 2011 is partway gone already and we’re into the new season. The tail end of last year flew by in a flurry of wedding preparation as Rain and Kat became Mr and Mrs Weston, followed by a busy family Christmas, (not sure that I should admit this, but my Christmas tree is still decorated in my spare room, I’m still hoping for someone to break in and undecorate it the same way she broke in to dress it up!) and suddenly it’s March already and the first two clutches are on the ground.

1st news is that Poor Chicken Little didn’t make it, she and we tried very hard, but the odds were stacked against us on this one, and she never made it to her second feed.

Other news is that the Ultrasounding is coming on in leaps and bounds, constant practice is enabling us to identify slugs from eggs and to find identifiable body organs, and it’s fascinating to do. It’s a wonderful tool and has probably helped this year to save the males from overuse on females that are either already gravid or re-absorbing. I think with the use of this magical window we may have doubled our clutches, though with the amount of effort we put in with 20 clutches last season we will be going without some sleep this season to cope with them all.

Indica the burmball may well be on her way to being a mommy, but sadly in order to Ultrasound an animal as powerful as she is, a degree of co-operation is required and she doesn’t always play ball, sometimes she wants to play burm instead.. (Ok, bad pun, I know) She has produced follicles, and has recently shed, and is exhibiting gravid behaviour, but who knows with this one, it’s a whole new ball game.. (yeah, see what I did there?)

More news, Pi have been granted UK and European distributorship of ARS racking and we ran a competition to guess the weight of Grail, the Axanthic Killer Bee at exactly 3.14 pm on Pi day, March 14th. This was won by Dave Rushen with an amazingly close guess of 1412g, he’ll be getting his prize soon and I can’t wait to get my hands on these lovely displays.

This year we welcomed the newest member of the Pi team, Dave The Brat. Dave is a panther chameleon, a little less than a year old that lives on my desk in my office. When I say on my desk, I actually mean he spends most of his time out and about wandering over the office furniture and staff, and has become a much loved member of the staff, follow his antics on his facebook page.

Well, that will do for now, I’m off to check for more clutches, the day is bright, and the future is snake shaped

- Jackie