#flagellates

“It is not that the algae are actually in molasses. Like all our other samples, they're living it up in good old H2O. And of course to us, liquid water is a flowing thing. We can swim through it, jump into it, run our hands through it, gather samples for this show from it--all with relative east. But for microbes, water isn't like that. It's like a syrup. And while life in syrup sounds whimsical, the mechanics and math that explains it is much less so... Warning, fluid dynamics ahead.”

Journey to the Microcosmos- Water Is Thicker When You’re Smaller

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs

This! This ... thing! It has potential to KILL me, because I´m constantly getting stuck on it, or I´m tripping over it ... especially in the morning before the first magical cup of coffee. When I can barely think. Or move. It has to remain in my small living room because I can´t place it somewhere else.

"Errr", you might say, "looks like climbing branches to me."

Yep. This death trap is mostly made out of climbing branches. Now why are these stupid things in my living room waiting patiently for the chance to end my life in a pretty absurd way?

My little garter snake Dante ...

... was acting strange. Barely active, mostly hiding. He was also looking pretty dull. 

Might go into shed, I thought by myself.

Days, and days, and even more days passed by, but he just would not shed. So I took him to the vet. And my vet diagnosted Dante with flagellates. (Google for it, otherwise this story would become way too long.)

Now! We´ve dealt with flagellates a few years before. I never wrote about it here, but it for sure did happen. And what I´ve learned:

- never EVER underestimate the stubborness of a little garter snake

- my garter snake does not eat in a small quarantine enclosure

So this time I spent hours with covering many things in Dantes normal enclosure (L 240 cm  H 60 cm  W 60 cm) with kitchen tissues so he could stay inside to eat his food. He had to be feed 5 days in a row with only one or two pieces of f.is/h or m/ou.se, and in every piece I had to inject the medicine given by the vet.

Folks.

These needles. Were just. So. Tiny.

I mean, look how tiny this is. Look at it. (It´s centimeter and millimeter.)

Luckily Dante did not care about the medicine, he just slammed down his food 5 days in a row.

(Yeah!!)

And I began to search his enclosure for some poop, because of course the vet had to check if the flagellates were gone. Note: the sample has to be fresh. Fresh is the best. Within 24 hours would be OK, too.

On this point, Dante refused to work with me.

Things he pooped in/on instead of nice white kitchen tissue:

- water bowl - the walls

Other things he did with it:

- slithering right through it - hiding it behind something so I would not see it right away - pooping on Saturday (no matter when I fed him) - pooping right after I checked upon it on a Friday morning

Somewhen I called my vet.

"Please! He´s not cooperating! Can we see you again?"

"Nope", said my vet. "To be absolutely sure if he´s fine or not, we need some poop. You have to wait for it."

"Dante", I said after ending the call, "you´re driving me crazy!"

He just gave me a "Nobody said keeping reptiles is easy" look and continued to chill on his favourite spot right above the heat lamp. So I waited ... and searched ... got frustrated ... and even more frustrated ...

2 days ago, I lost my patience. When I came home from work, Dante - who had eaten on Monday - was sleeping in a hide, and I just carefully took this hide, put it into the small enclosure he had been in for hibernation ...

... set up a quarantine enclosure ...

... carefully grabbed the small hibernation enclosure ... and ... maybe I screamed.

"DANTE! ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!"

Maybe you would have screamed, too.

He had just pooped. A really big one. When I had just spent HOURS to set up a quarantine enclosure.

"You! Are! The! Freaking! Worst!", I told him after releasing him into the quarantine enclosure, because everything was ready to go, and there was no way I would build everything back right now AGAIN). "Thank you for pooping, though."

Sometimes driving to the vet feels sooooooo good!

And this is the reason why there´s a death trap in my living room made out of climbing branches. I´m waiting for the vet´s information whether Dante is healthy again and can go back into his normal enclosure, together with all the enrichment stuff I´m constantly tripping over, or getting stuck on it.

Mostly in the morning.

Before the first magical cup of coffee.

Identification done by me and the good folk of inaturalist (where I am balimaria as well). All photos are my own and any mistakes, ID or otherwise, are certainly my own as well.

“If we're comparing things moving in water, then one of the most useful things to note is that an organism's Reynolds number will generally increase with its size. A person swimming in water might have a Reynolds number that's on the order of 10,000 which  lets us glide a little between each stroke. A blue whale might be somewhere on the order of 100 million, which lets it travel quite far with just a flap of its tail. Bacteria, by comparision, they're working with a Reynolds number that's more on the order of 0.00001. And where a whale or a person can travel multiple body lengths depending on how we generate power, a bacteria that's been pushing by something else will only travel about a tenth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom before coming to a stop. That is not far.”

Journey to the Microcosmos- Water Is Thicker When You’re Smaller

Journey to the Microcosmos: The Micro World Right Under Your Feet

Images originally captured by Jam’s Germ’s

“These responses [to viscosity] are important for understanding not only the individual lives of microbes and the ecosystems they live in. They're important for understanding our own bodies because to many microbes, we are just another strange geographic feature to live in. We're a living bag of fluids that bacteria often find their way into. And how they navigate our body deepling impacts our health.”

Journey to the Microcosmos- Water Is Thicker When You’re Smaller

Images Originally Captured by Jam’s Germs