[stonyloam]

“Ladybug Ladybug fly away home”: Pre release update. I was beginning to wonder if the coloration of her tail was caused by necrosis and the tail was in fact dead. It felt kind of stiff so I was a little worried. So thought I would give it one more shot to see what was going on. I smeared the Neosporin all over the tail to see if it would soften the unshed skin if that was the problem. I needed to see what was going on, so got out the 10X magnifier and took a look (her tail is only 2mm thick at that point). Still pretty hard to tell so I decided what the heck, and scraped the tail with my fingernail (if you have looked at the photos you can see that my fingers are not exactly precision instruments). Lo and behold it looked like some of the skin started to loosen. Worked on it fro a few minutes and all of the old skin came off leaving beautiful fresh skin behind. The tail was soft and flexible and the wound , though nasty looking has scabbed over pretty nicely and I think she will be OK. You all were right (start patting yourselves on the back) there was a layer of unshed skin there. The last photo is her heading to her new home, she moved pretty fast and I didn’t get a very good photo (stupid autofocus). I’ll let you know if I see her again.