Let's face it, no action in life goes without consequence, good or bad, everything we do impacts something along the way. Whether you smiled at a random stranger that really needed some kindness without knowing it or doing something that might impact our own person negatively - nothing goes without the world around us reacting to our actions.
Now I bet at this stage you are wondering what exactly this has to do with this Blue-Headed Tree Agama or as we know it in Afrikaans a Bloukopkoggelmander.
You see my daughter, back from university for a short while, recently came across a huge ant nest that was busy moving into her room, and being an impulsive teenager, she saw it fit to reach for some poison, she proceeded to follow the trail of ants to their nest where they were moving the eggs from and applied a decent amount of poison to the cause.
In a way I can understand her action, no one wants to live in a terrarium/ ant farm, and to a certain extent we all value our own comfort, especially when things like creepy crawlies invade our personal living space, however I have always taught her to be considerate of nature, even with small things. Clearly on this day, those life lessons didn't apply.
Now this might not seem like such a major train smash, and for the bigger part, the impact of her actions this day would have gone unnoticed under most circumstances. But as life would have it, this blue headed tree agama, just so happened to be in the are - and unlike most other lizards, this specific species enjoy making a meal out of ants despite their acidity that would deter most other reptiles, especially if the ants are moving their precious protein rich egg cargo around on the surface.
So this poor tree agama, wrong place, wrong time, ingested quite a bit of ant poison while grabbing his share of fast food, and although it was not enough to kill him, it was more than enough to make him very sick. And as such he was left very vulnerable to any predators.
I decided to scoop him up out of danger, and place him in a terrarium that we readied for him from an old fish tank - this is just a temporary solution though. We place a warm water bag in in daily to make sure that he can get his body temperature up enough for him to metabolize, and throw any crickets or bugs we can find in there. I am honestly hoping that this little guy will be able to make a full recovery...
Of all the animals I have rescued, Lizards were not on that list till now.
I really do hope that this amazing little beast pulls through, these are another one of those critters that I grew up seeing everywhere on farm lands, but sadly due to industrial agriculture as well as the general reduction of their natural habitat, these lizards has gone down in numbers drastically. I must say, when we first got him he was pale as you can see in the picture above, as opposed to the the picture of him now in the terrarium where his head has regained the blue color that you'd expect them to be, so it looks like there might be some hope.
I am hoping that by tomorrow, this guy will be ready to go back outside to start fending for himself, that is if it is a nice and sunny day...
Please think twice before using harmful chemicals, insecticides and poisons - you never know the full impact it has on nature and the surrounding ecosystems!