Willow's gone :(

[hobotramp]

Last night when I went to spray hides and fill water everything seemed fine. She was starting a shed , but active and went to get a drink of water. Around noon today I was filling the mealie bowls and noticed she hadn't shed yet, I nudged her and her eyes weren't open very much (I thought it was from the shed) and she walked away. I nudged her to the moist hide and she went in no problem. Two hours later I checked on her after reading another post about the leo that passed away and the symptoms sounded familiar. She was propped up sideways on the cave. When I picked her up she was very limp, but still breathing although very sporadic. I put her down and she started rolling from side to side (death roll ?). I moved her to the warm end and stroked her back. She didn't seem to breathe unless I did that. Unfortuneately I had to leave for work. I'm pretty certain she died before I left the room, but Glenn said she was definitely gone when he got home. We'll miss her. I suspect she had a problem related to the stretch between her first and second clutch (4 months). She laid her third clutch on May 4th and was getting due for her fourth. Everyone else that was in with her is doing fine, but we'll be giving everything a really good sanitizing just in case and doing fecals as well. We had no clue that anything was wrong until this afternoon, so it has been quite a shock.

Here's the last pic I got of her. It was taken about a month ago.
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid118/p8aa98cf3ad5e8aff824517b36c0bc05e/f8892d2b.jpg

RIP Willow. We loved you.

[ChristinaM]

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, sorry to hear that Lyndsay. :(

[Betty Miskie]

Sorry to hear about Willow, it isn't easy when we lose one of our "babies".
Betty

[DragnDrop]

Oh Lyndsay, I'm so sorry :(

It's hard enough to lose one that's been sick, but out of the blue like that it's even worse. I've heard of the sudden death in gravid females quite often, ususally around shedding time too. One of mine died like that a few years ago, so I have an idea how you feel right now. I have no clue what goes wrong in these situations, but going by the problems pregnant humans face, I imagine it's 'one of those things'.
You give great care to your critters, so don't even think you did something wrong.

[hobotramp]

Thanks for your thoughts. At least we have two babies from her and 4 eggs incubating. We'll definitely be keeping at least one of her babies now in her memory. Still can't believe it happenned so fast.

[klein]

sorry to hear about willow, hope everything works out with the eggs she gave you

Nick

[Samba]

I'm so sorry to here of your loss, I know how you feel. If I were you I'd get a necropsy to possibly find some answers. Until then, at least be asured that you still have her in the form of her young. Good luck with them all...

[hobotramp]

Looked into the necropsy, but I know the vet had told us before it needs to be done within 24 hours. We called him this morning and never heard back from them. It's been more than 24 hours now. Don't know if they could still check for egg binding, choking, stuff like that though. My husband froze her (sounds morbid, but we still have two frozen from the winter to be buried as well), so maybe they could still check some stuff since the decomposition rate would have pretty much been stopped. We're going to have our own little pet cemetary out back. Maybe this will be it now (bad stuff comes in three's right?) as we lost our Viper-tail in Nov/Dec, our Mozambique Agama in Dec. and now Willow. I think we've lost enough to last us a long time now and everyone else should be able to live at least another 15+ years. Here's hoping anyways.

[Cruciform]

If it's only going to be a day or two before necropsy, you might want to try keeping any future critters on ice, packed in a foam cooler, rather than frozen. It might assist the vet more than freezing them solid, which would probably inflict tissue damage.

Shame about the little one. That was a cute pic.