Reptile Mites are Mite-y Shitty. Hehe…puns.

Who here has reptiles? Everyone who just went “I do!” in that internal voice we all have that sounds nothing like we actually sound in real life, then you’re awesome.

Now, who here has a reptile or has had a reptile that was infested with parasitic mites?

Yeah, first off, I feel your pain. Secondly, how the fuck did you get rid of them!!!!?????

My Ezra, a red iguana has these mites.

 And let me tell you, the process suggested to remove them is both laborious and slow working. These little fucks are tiny, and despite my best efforts I still find a fresh batch of them laying on the papertowels I am temporarily using as substrate. Granted, this morning most of them looked dead (Yay!) but there were still a couple moving (Booooo!) And I don’t know how the hell those fuckers are holding on because I bathed the shit out of him. Let me explain.

Step 1: Discover that those specks of dust are actually moving. Recoil in horror. Google the fuck out of what those could be.

Step 2: Be horrified at the amount of time and money this will cost.

Step 3: So, he needs to be soaked and afterwards needs to go into what is hopefully a santized cage. Take the smallest cage, the one from when he was a baby, and submerge the entire fucker in bleach water. Be grateful you discovered them before transfering him into the 7foot tall monstrosity you just finished building. Let soak, along with all food/water dishes, branches, etc. Wipe down all chords and lamp fixtures with bleach water mixture, vacuum the hell out of surrounding areas. Come back, drain bleach water and then refill with cold water to both drown anything that escaped the first flood and remove toxic bleach. dry thoroughly and place paper towel in the bottom.

Step 4: Soak the poor infested lizard in a betadine/water solution. Pour plain water over his head so that mites will not just travel up his poor head to escape drowning. Use Qtips to obsessively scrub between legs and spikes, attacking anything that looks like a tiny red dot (this is especially frustrating if your iguana is red.)

Step 5: repeat Step 3 with the cage he can actually move in. Fumigate. How do you fumigate? Buy a few flea collars, open and set in the cage on top of some foil. Don’t let them touch the cage floor! seal tightly in plastic and let fumes gather for 3-4 hours. Unwrap and toss all plastic outside the house in case of infestation. Air out. In order to be safe, you must air out over night so the fumes don’t hurt your baby, who probably has an imprinted fear of Qtips at this point.

Step 6: Soak lizard again. Scrub again. Try to avoid getting tail whipped in the face. Fail and accept that this will probably happen again.

DO IT ALL AGAIN THE NEXT FUCKING DAY. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN. Tonight is our 4th cage sanitazion, fumigation, switch out. Last night we added Prevent-A-Mite to the mix, which is approved for reptile use. you basically spray it on everything and air out for 30 minutes before replacing the reptile, being sure not to spray with repile or food and water source by you. Like I said, a lot of them looked dead this morning so let’s hope.

The only good thing about this, if you try really hard to be optimistic, is that the mites have no interest in anything but reptiles, so the cats and lil old me are safe and unharrassed.

If none of this works, we are going to buy predatory mites which eat parasitic mites, and release them into his cage to hunt the fuckers down. After all the parasitic mites are eaten, the pradtory ones will die.

So far the cost is….

2 flea collars: $6

Betadine which is almost out after 4 uses: $30

Prevent-A-Mite Spray: $30

Bag of bedding which had to be tossed in case of contamination: $15

And the Predatory Mites are another $30 not including shipping.

Wish me luck people. I seriously fucking need it.