Lost tegu!

[Chanowa]

We lost our tegu about 5 days ago. She got out of her cage and somehow got outside. Yesterday one of our neighbors 4 houses down found her in her backyard but didn’t try to capture her because she was scared and my tegu got away. My husband and I are devastated. Any ideas on how to attract her back?

 

[Sean32817]

Rexx did the same thing but I was lucky enough to find him in my yard.

You'll need to hunt around the time he usually gets up as that's when he'll most likely be in the open sunning himself.

Let everyone know he's out there so they will call you and not animal control.

Depending on his size you may be able to trap him - Home Depot sells Heart animal traps - they are large enough for coons and reasonable price.

Bait them with his favorite food and get permission to place them in yards.

Put up missing posters and offer reward - talk to the kids as $20 for someone finding and leading you to him will get them searching all over the place.

I went nuts when I lost Rexx so my heart goes out to you - I hope you can find your baby.

 

[Sean32817]

Additional notes (sorry for using he instead of she too) - per Clint of Clint's Reptiles, tegu see other light spectrums and if your girl isn't used to being outside then she might not visually recognize you should you catch up with her - he said his freaked and attacked him the first time it saw him in real, direct sunlight.

Another potential issue is her being on edge due to either a bad encounter with a human or predator.

As such, I'm going to highly recommend wearing some good, solid leather gloves when hunting for her as she may panic when you try to catch her or you may do like I did and be overly aggressive in your capture attempt.

I tackled and pinned Rexx to the ground because tegu are FAST and I didn't want to risk him running away, so he was understandably scared when I caught him and defended himself accordingly, resulting in me getting a full jaw bite to the wrist - he bit hard enough that I thought he might have sprained or broken my wrist at the time - just deep bruising and a few small tooth holes that stopped bleeding by the time I had him back in his home.

You may want to consider a net as well in case your girl is somewhere hard to access or panics upon seeing her overly relieved mom or dad rushing over to rescue her.

Looking at the date of your OP I'm hoping this advice is all moot and she's sitting in her home pestering you for hardboiled eggs.