Aurora Turns 10: A Milestone Celebration & a Heartwarming Gift Story

I have mixed emotions about the stuff I’m going to tell you all about in this post. I feel like it’s one of those “I have good news and bad news, which do you want first?” type of deals. Luckily the bad news isn’t too horrible, so I guess I’ll start with that.

I posted a little bit about this over on our Facebook page on Tuesday, so some of you might know already, but our lovely Miss Aurora had to have a minor surgery Tuesday morning. I haven’t been writing much about the geckos here lately, but Aurora has been battling an abscess near her vent for awhile now. We tried two courses of different antibiotics. For those of you wondering, no, giving geckos antibiotics is not fun.

Despite our best efforts, the trial and error with antibiotics just wasn’t cutting it. Her abscess kept getting bigger. Thankfully, through all this, Aurora remained her happy, hungry self. She never seemed overly stressed and never stopped eating. Early Tuesday morning I took her in to have her abscess surgically removed. We also had a culture done so we could finally find out for sure what type of bacteria caused her abscess and what type of antibiotics will help fight it.

I say we had it removed rather than drained because reptiles are strange critters indeed.  Hopefully this isn’t too gross for anyone.  Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to learn about reptile pus.  Reptile pus is caseous.  Meaning, it’s actually firm and cheese-like (bet no one is going to want to eat cheese today now) rather than liquidy.  It can’t really be drained the way that an abscess in a human or a dog could be.  The vet showed me what she removed from Aurora’s abscess.  They were hard and looked like little (or big, compared to Aurora’s size) rocks. Anywho, moving on…

I stayed at the vets’ during Aurora’s surgery and was able to take her home right after. She bit me while she was coming out of anesthesia, silly girl.  In 10+ years of keeping leopard geckos this was only the second time ever that I’ve been bitten by one. I can’t say I blame her either. I guess that’s the thanks I get for essentially getting her butt surgery for her birthday!

Perfect segue into my good news…today is Aurora’s 10th hatch day!!

Yup, I got her butt surgery for her 10th birthday. That has to top the “worst gifts ever” list but hey, exotic vets aren’t cheap you know!

Actually, I also deep cleaned and redecorated her tank, not that she can enjoy it yet. Aurora has two stitches down near her bum and until her incision closes up I’m keeping her in a hospital tank. It’s basically a smaller tank with minimal decorations that is much easier to keep sterile than her regular home is. Once her incision heals she’ll have a fun new tank setup to explore.

Aurora seems to be doing really well. Her biting me right after surgery shows how feisty she is. She was begging me for food Tuesday night, so I guess despite everything she’s been through she still has her appetite. I’ll keep you all updated on how everything goes.

Here’s to Aurora’s big 1-0! She’s currently my oldest pet, as she’s a few months older than Kitsune is. I really don’t think she looks her age at all! She hasn’t changed much, looks or energy level wise, over the past 10 years. Leopard geckos in captivity are said to live an average of between 6 and 10 years (yikes), but it’s not all that unusual for some of them to make it to anywhere between 10 and 20+ years. I read once about a male leopard gecko who was still a big fan of the ladies at a bit over 27 years old!

So here’s to hoping that with a little bit of luck, and I’m sure some more vet bills along the way, our amazing Aurora has many, many more happy birthdays to celebrate.

….Maybe just without the butt surgeries? Celebrating your birthday with a butt abscess removal surgery really should be a once in a lifetime thing.