👋 A wild pink-haired vet tech appeared! (Let's get re-introduced)

Welcome to the 120 new subscribers! Grab your coffee and let's talk shop. On Wednesdays We Wear Scales 🦎💅 A midweek check-in from your favorite pink-haired reptile nurse. Hey! Grab your iced coffee (or Alani) and help me welcome some fresh faces, because our little community is growing fast. We have gained a whopping 120 new subscribers since last week's newsletter! I know most of you found your way here after grabbing my Free Bug Guide, so I hope your feeder colonies are already living their absolute best lives. Because we have so many new animal nerds in the mix, I figured it was the perfect time to pause our usual programming, do a proper roll call, and introduce myself to the new members of the crew. Featured Creature: Meet Your Head Zookeeper 🦖 Hi, I'm Kasey! If you're new around here, the TL;DR version of my life is pretty simple: by day (and mostly by night), I am an overnight emergency veterinary technician. By... well, also by night, I run Sweet Ave Zoo, where I’m dedicated to sharing the real, unfiltered, and slightly chaotic side of keeping exotic pets and invertebrates. My home is less of a standard house and more of a fully functioning reptile room. Right now, the resident zoo crew includes: Chompers, my baby dinosaur (Savannah monitor lizard). Fettuccine, the gorgeous, super chill boa constrictor. Gold Dust, my bright little Arizona bark scorpion. Jeff, my resident GBB tarantula. Azalea, my jumping spider friend. Pizza, a very goofy axolotl. Chicken and Finger, my duo of cane toads. Oh, and I also have a furry sidekick, a dog named Sapphire, who patiently tolerates living in a home surrounded by scales and bugs. I am incredibly passionate about proper animal husbandry, and I don't sugarcoat the realities of what it takes to keep these unique species happy and healthy. 💡 Keeper Notes: Shedding the Myth on Feeder Bugs Since so many of you joined the crew specifically to up your insect game with the bug guide, I wanted to drop a quick, crucial keeper tip regarding proper nutrition. When people start keeping reptiles or predatory invertebrates, they tend to think a bug is just a bug. They buy a container of crickets, toss them into the enclosure a few hours later, and think the job is done. But here is the golden rule of exotic keeping: Your pet is eating whatever your bugs just ate. In the keeper world, we call this gut-loading. If you feed your insects cheap, dry cardboard, your reptile is essentially eating a cardboard-flavored insect with zero nutritional value. To prevent massive nutritional deficiencies down the road, you want to feed your feeder insects high-quality, nutrient-dense diets (like fresh greens, carrots, and custom grain mixes) for at least 24 to 48 hours before they get offered to your pets. ⚡ Product Spotlight: Binge-Read the Sweet Ave Zoo Archive! Now that you know a bit about me, the resident critters, and my gaming inventory drops, you might be wondering what else you’ve missed over the last 32 issues. If you want to catch up on the backstory of how this whole journey started, or if you're looking for more practical, beginner-friendly breakdowns of exotic care, you are in luck. We officially host our entire newsletter catalog online! Every single past issue is fully formatted, searchable, and completely free to read over on the platform. It's the absolute best way for all 120 of our new subscribers to jump right into the deep end with us. [Binge-Read the Sweet Ave Zoo Blog Archive Here!] MY WEBSITE Visit Our Socials Sweet Ave Pawtucket, RI 02861 View in browser You are getting this email because you've subscribed to sweetavezoo at beacons.ai/sweetavezoo. If you'd like to stop receiving these emails, you can unsubscribe from the list.