Diary of Bingo & Eve.
Records from May, 97
Articles are extracted and modified from my letter written to my friend Marie.Bingo
May, 19, 1997 [Happy Birthday]
Sing a song!Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Bingo.
Happy birthday to you.
Whee, was kind of short and kind of long. I want to thank everyone who gave us all the cheers. Bingo is completely healthy except her right eye problem. But she can handle that. She is now jumping around roaming free in our living room.
We made a special birthday cake with tofu, bread, strawberry, pumpkin etc.. Cake on left is my work and right cake was done by my wife Takako. These cakes existed only for 30 seconds. Both of them disappeared within a few minutes.
I hope she understood our efforts.
Don't eat them like a cow Bingo. Taste it!
December, 25, 1997 [Merry Christmas]
Sorry for not updating for long time. Bingo is doing very good.This is a recent picture with Takako.
Look how big she is now! She is now over 360mm(SVL) and weigh over 2500g. That is 4.7 times larger in SVL and 166 times heavier than her birth.
And today, she mated with our 4 years old male called Nano. Amazing! She is only one and a half years old. We were worried because we thought she is still too young to mate. We watched them very close with special care so she will not get hurt but Nano did it very gentle. I am not sure if she is possible to lay fertile eggs in this youth. We'll see.
March, 15, 1998 [Bingo was Bingo!]
She made it!Bingo layed 42 eggs today! She did great. She is still an year and 10 months old with SVL of 360mm. They may be fertile because she had mated with our male iguana "Nano". So we collected all the eggs and put them in the incubator.
She lost her appetite about a month ago and started the "digging" behavior in last 2 weeks. So 2 weeks ago, we moved her to the iguana room, where 5 females are roaming free. I thought it was safer there to dig than leaving her in living room.
She got very skinny and started to eat like a cow again. Gosh! so much appetite. Whenever we enter
the room, she jumps on to us asking for food.We thought she was still a baby, but maybe she is going to be a mother.
May, 19, 1999 [Happy Birthday]
Bingo now turned into 3 years old. Happy birthday, Bingo!
She is healthy and doing fine. We measured her today. She is 410mm SVL, 3460grams.She did not lay her eggs this year. Maybe she decided to rest for a while.
Her body color started to change from green to brown. Now she is a real adult.
Eve
June, 3, 1997 [Happy Birthday]
Sing a song again.Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Eve.
Happy birthday to you.
She survived one year without a sight. We got so many cheers from all over the world. We really want to thank everyone. Her life was supported by hundreds of people.
Today we celebrated her one year birthday with vegetable cake. I wish she could see how delicious it looks...But I know she can smell, she can taste and she can feel all your love.
Since she has an eye sight failure, I think her other senses are becoming very keen.We wish you to live long, Eve!
December, 25, 1997 [Merry Christmas Eve!]
We got many letters from all over the world. "What happend to Bingo and Eve?" Sorry I was so busy I couldn't take new pictures of them.Eve is now over 270mm(SVL) and weigh over 820g. Compare to Bingo, Eve's growth rate is quite slow. One reason is, Bingo is roaming free and Eve is kept in a glass green house. Bingo is jumping around all day and Eve is mostly sleeping. Bingo eats like a cow but Eve gets tired every one bite of leaf. That makes a big difference.
But he has a beautiful coloration. I think most iguanas get dull-hued color after a year or so but Eve still has bright green body.
Eve goes to bed everyday with Takako.
March, 5, 1998 [Himawari(Sunflower)]
We got a special lighting system called "Himawari" for Eve.
Actually, we are borrowing from the company who developed this system.This day, people from that company came to YIL with their latest system. They wanted me to test it to see if it is usable to reptiles. It is a epoch-making very interesting system.
Shape looks like transparent dome shaped robot and sun tracing system is installed inside. It searches for the sun by itself and trace the movement of the sun very correctly by timer and adjust very accurate by built-in sensor. This is why it is named "Himawari", which means "Sunflower".
Maybe it looks more like a theodolite on telescope in an acrylic resin dome. It has six aspherical lenses and sun-ray will be focused very sharp, less than 1mm, and led into a fiberglass.
This fiber glass is made of 100% pure quartz glass and energy of the light will hardly be attenuated for long distance. This time, they brought us 10m fiber glass.
Every other lightings including full spectrum lights are all simulation of actual sun lights. And they can never reach to actual sun light. But this system is not a simulation. It will bring us the real sunlight.
Only things I care about is the attenuation ratio of UVB range. I asked them to bring the absolute UVB energy data they are transmitting. I know normal glass used in windows absorb over 96% of UVB range but quarts can pass shorter wave length. I don't think we can count on it but even less in persentage, maybe absolute value will be higher than using other artificial lightings. If so, I think this system may be a good system for reptile keeper. I will tell you when they give me the answer.
We installed the Himawari and set the output fiberglass to Eve's green house.
As you know Eve has a sight failure but minute after we installed himawari, she came right
under the himawari's output and started to bathe.This was very surprizing because we were not expecting for that system so much. Eve's body color changed very very dark as if she is sunbathing in direct sunlight and kept the same pose under the light for few hours.
I am not sure but I think they have some kind of attraction to maybe color or heat or someother attributes of real sunlight which we can not feel. Maybe they are feeling something by their third eye.
And again, this is not artificial light, it is just a subset of real sunlight.
I don't think you need this in warm countries but very interesting system to use in countries that has cold winter time. We always have problems and never had a good answer to make them bathe in the sun without freezing them. This system only leads light and does not take iguana's heat away.
April, 30, 1999 [Sun Bathing]
Eve is almost 3 years old now. Look how pretty he is. He still have those flashing green body color.He is still living in a glass green house separated from other iguanas. I think his eyes will not develop.
But he has a beautiful coloration. I think most iguanas get dull-hued color after a year or so but Eve still has bright green body. Eve goes to bed everyday with Takako.
June, 3, 1999 [Birthday]
Happy birthday Eve! He is 3 years old now.He still lives in glass green house because there are so much danger to roam free. Our 5 years old Nano(SVL 480mm, Weight 3360g. Maybe Eve's father) already recognizes Eve as a male and tries to attack Eve through the glass. We can never put them together.
Eve takes sun bathing at our balcony. He exercizes a lot and poop there. That is his favorite.