I came home for Thanksgiving vacation today to find Trevor pretty badly impacted. My mother had been soaking him in warm water every night for a week, but nothing had happened. You could feel the poop not only on his right side but actually wrapping around and going all the way under his stomach! Trevor's probably four or five inches snout to vent, so you can imagine how big this was. I was pretty freaked out, so I soaked him for awhile and still nothing. Apparently it had been almost three weeks since he had used the bathroom, and his whole side was sticking out at an odd angle.

Then I decided to try and gently massage the impaction to see if I could loosen it a bit. I was really careful because I know it's fairly easy to damage frogs' organs doing this, but really had no other option. Then I remembered something I had read about having to rub kittens on their butt to make them use the bathroom (there's a name for the procedure but I really have no clue what it is...) and figured "Eh, it's gross, but Trevor's not doing well so I should probably give it a shot". After about a minute of that, he finally used the bathroom. Needless to say it was horrifying. But he's doing fine now.

I just had to share that little horror story! He's had problems with impaction ever since I got him.. They'd put him on the wrong substrate in the pet store, and he had ingested some. He made it through, but I'm starting to wonder if it could have somehow damaged his colon? I mean, this has happened several times in less than a year, I'm just usually around to catch things before they get quite this bad. It's getting a little ridiculous!