Lamb
New member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2009
- Messages
- 222
- Reaction score
- 12
- Points
- 0
- Age
- 36
- Location
- USA
- Country
- United States
Big died while I was visiting family at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi at the beginning of this week. I returned home to find him belly up in his water bowl, mouth agape, and already starting to decay. Fortunately, the smell wasn’t too strong. For about a month I had suspected that something was up, as Big had been less active and eating infrequently. I am unsure what I could have done at that stage that would have prevented the present outcome. It is easy to list actions that I wish I would have taken (perhaps more frequent misting or water changes, or a diet consisting of something other than crickets?), but without knowing the cause of death, I do not know whether they would have helped. Needless to say, it was sad to see an animal that I had lived with for two years die.
Willie’s death caught me completely off guard. This past Wednesday night, I left to watch a friend perform at a bar in downtown Hattiesburg. When I returned, about three hours later, Willie was pale and dead on the land portion of his terrarium. After a lot of cursing, I examined the body and found that he had prolapsed (see the attached picture). The prolapse could have been the result of an impaction in his digestive system (perhaps too much chitin in his diet?). The last time I handled him was this past Tuesday, and there was no sign of a prolapse. I’m not sure when it showed up, nor am I sure of how long he suffered with it before he died. I put him in a bag in the freezer and will dissect him in a few days to determine if impaction was the cause of death. I suspect that it will be, because even though I had decreased his food intake, he was not losing weight.
According to the captive-longevity estimates for each of their species, both Big (2 years as a frog) and Willie (<1 year as a frog) have died young. They were interesting critters, to say the least, and I will miss them.
