Myrtle is very stubborn. She has only ever put up with having Jeeves as a cagemate. Every other time I've tried to house her, however briefly, with another female, she's thrown a fit and attacked the poor girl viciously. Myrtle is also smart- she just has that air of calculation about her. I think the only reason she put up with Caiman's advances is his great size advantage. She's a fairly small female- she was 45 grams when these photos were taken (you can see the bite-marks she has from breeding). She's never had any problems with shedding or anything else; she's a no-nonsense kind of girl.

It took until the end of the 2006 season, but I finally figured out something interesting about Myrtle. Out of every single clutch she laid, no matter how I cared for it, One egg would always go bad. It would be fertile initially, and sometimes look great up until its clutchmate hatched. I finally put it together that one of her ovaries has some sort of flaw, such that the eggs it produces are not ultimately viable. I certainly don't hold it against her. To the contrary, I was relieved to realize that it wasn't my fault that so many eggs were going bad.

Myrtle is now retired from breeding. She's absolutely reveling in her post-breeding status, strutting around her 10 gallon like the cat's meow.

Myrtle is the dam of:

Stewie (2005)

Owen (2006)

Impi (2006)