Houdini is a Saharan Uromastyx from Deer Fern Farms. I purchased him while at the Puyallup, WA reptile expo. He should turn a very bright orange as he reaches adult hood.

We chose the name Houdini for two reasons. One, he is so skiddish around us (new environment, stressed out) that he "dissappears" into his hiding cave when ever we stand in front of his enclosure. And the other reason we named him that is because he escaped from his cage the very first day we had him. We was in a temporary cardboard box that was at least 20 inches tall. Houdini is only 9 inches long and there was nothing for him to climb on to get out. He must have got a footing in the corner of the box where the cardboard is glued together. When I came home from the pet store with his new set up, he was gone! I looked for about 20 minutes before finding him in a paper sack under the counter where his box was. He must've fallen into the sack of recycle papers. Thank goodness for that sack of papers, because he could've really hurt himself if he would've landed on the hard wood floors.

On October 19th, we got Houdini a girlfriend (another Saharan Uro from Deer Fern Farms). Her name is Maya. So far it looks like they hit it off great and get along just fine.

Update, January 14, 2004: Maya has developed pneumonia. The vet's not sure what the cause of it is because her set up and temps are correct. We've started giving her Baytril to try to fight the infection. Pray for the best! Also, Houdini has developed a problem with his mouth from the millet seed we were using as a substrate. It seems that whenever Houdini would go to sleep, he would jam his face into a corner and the millet seeds would get lodged in his mouth. This created infections and resulted in him losing part of his lower lip. See the photo below. We have removed the millet seed and are now using non slip padded shelf liner. This is a much cleaner substrate and shouldn't cause any more problems with Houdini's mouth. I hope his mouth will heal.

Update, March 6, 2003: Both Houdini and Maya have passed away. For the last 2 months, both were showing signs of respiratory problems. Baytril was given as the antibiotic of choice, but did nothing to help them. Other antibiotics were tried and many tests were run but nothing was found or cured. Maya passed away a few weeks before Houdini and we lost Houdini on March 6. They both struggled for several weeks to get better, but unfortunately were too sick. There was nothing that I or our very qualified vets could do for them. A necropsy was done on Maya to try to find a cure for Houdini. The cause of death: pulmonary edema with secondary heart failure. In other words, her lungs were full of fluid and her heart gave up. I will not post photos of them when they were sick - we want them to be remembered when they were healthy, happy little uro's. RIP Maya and Houdini. They will be greatly missed!