Hi everyone,
I wanted to introduce myself and give you a bit of my story. I'm located on the south coast of BC, Canada and I'm fostering a Savannah Monitor. A very good friend of mine runs a reptile rescue here and this past October, just a week before she was due to go on her first holiday in 12 years, she got an urgent email to take in a severely neglected Sav. To make a long story short, I offered to foster him so she could still take her vacation. I have been keeping snakes for a few years and was completely uneducated with Sav's but with her help I thought I could take this guy in until she returned.
From what the rescue was told in his surrender form, he was bounced around from at least 3 different homes, none of which gave him proper care and his diet consisted of being thrown a hard boiled egg once in a while. This guy was so emiciated the base of his tail was shaped like a toblerone bar. I got him into the local reptile vet and his prognosis was severe pnemonia in both lungs, severe dehydration and emiciation. The vet said I could do 2 things, which was euthanasia or try getting him back with tube feeding, baytril and heat, heat and more heat. I hated to think this poor monitor's life came down to dying from this abuse so I offered to try giving him a fighting chance.
He responded pretty good, and it only took 6 days of tube feeding to get him strong enough to take food on his own. By the time my friend came back from holidays I fell hopelessly inlove and wanted to continue fostering him and she also didn't really have the space for a monitor in her rescue. What made us all decide to give him a chance instead of euthanizing him was because he still had lots of fight in him even when he was so malnourished and dehydrated. Its been just over 2 months since he came here and he's doing so much better, but still a long way to go. His lastest vet visit showed he had arthritis in one of his knees
I don't know his age, but after catching him in the act I do know for certain he is indeed male. He is about 35" from snout to the tip of his tail so just about full grown (?) He is very food aggressive and already bit me once when I was stupid enough to give him a bit of a head rub when I thought he was sleeping :P He is fairly docile but will only tolerate so much.
I've spent almost every waking hour on the internet trying to absorb as much as I can about the proper care since he came here and I always come back to the website infernalis made. My reptile rescue buddy also regularly directs people to his website for care info. The cage I built for him is not adequate I know (its 7 x 3 x 3) but it was something I could throw together quickly. I need to get him a much bigger cage with deeper substrate, but first I will have to get a home inspector out to check if my house can sustain the weight of a cage filled with the proper depth of substrate. Or I need to figure out a way of still providing him the ability to burrow without the weight or have the rescue find him a home that can provide the care he needs. I really hope there is a way to make it work here because he definitley rules the house
Anyway, I joined to be able to take part in the forum.
Thanks for listening
Lori
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