Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Our most senior pet


Here is the much-loved but seldom photographed Kartini, a 16-year-old leopard gecko, named after an Indonesia heroine, because Kartini was a wedding gift, and we spent part of our southeast Asian honeymoon in Indonesia!

She's the least trouble of any of our pets and leads a quiet life in her terrarium, eating crickets and other insects.

8 comments:

  1. Wow-that's a great shot! Is this old for a gecko? She sure looks still fine to me. :o)

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  2. What a handome fellow!

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  3. Sharon, in San Francisco6:11 pm

    She's beautiful! I hope that we get to see more pictures of her...Im impressed at her age!

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  4. Fantastic! I'm filled with admiration. Where do you find the food? We had 2 chameleons, at one time. They were small and didn't live very long. I think we didn't know well enough how to take care of them. Please, tell us more about Kartini.

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  5. She is rather cute!

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  6. Anonymous8:52 pm

    She's fascinating! How large? Do you know a lot about such critters? Not trying to push my blog here, but please look at this photo and see if you can figure out what that is that the skink is trailing No one I know seems to have seen anything like that before. I need a skink expert--a real skinker. :)

    http://merrilymarylee.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/skinking-around/

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  7. Monika, I read that the record for a leopard gecko is 25 years. I heard that 18 years was a normal long lifespan, but I've read conflicting info!

    I need to a do a photo shoot with Gordon. Kartini is too squirmy to photograph alone! And of course you need to clear the area of cats and dogs.

    Claudia, chameleons are a lot harder to care for (specific temperature and humidity requirements, etc) Leopard geckos are pretty easy! Kartini mainly eats crickets that we buy at the pet store. We "gut-load" the crickets first, i.e. fill them up with nutritious cricket goodies. At least they ave a good meal before they get eaten alive!

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  8. MerrilyMarylee, I am pretty sure your wee skinkie was shedding, then eating its skin! Big on recycling, these reptiles.

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Thank you for all your comments, which I love to read!