My herp got away. Fortunately, most escapes can be stopped before they happen with some attention to the enclosure of the animal in question. Don't take small, quick-moving animals out to play on the lawn. As a general rule, assume that your herp can levitate, walk through walls, cloud your mind so that you cannot see it, pass through the holes in pegboard, and gravitate unerringly to the most inaccessible spot in your home. Design enclosures and herp rooms accordingly.
Many people use mealworms as feeders with no ill effects at all, especially with lizards.
However, mealworms have hard chitinous shells and may cause digestive problems in large quantities. The chitin problem can be almost entirely ameliorated by feeding mealworms that have just shed their exoskeleta. It's not pleasant, but it beats risking your herp's health. Although some lizards and amphibians will eat rodents, amphibians typically will not take dead food, and most carnivorous lizards eat rodents too small for the concerns of this section to be a factor. Although a snake is a pretty formidable adversary for even the toughest rodent, a feeder can occasionally get lucky and manage to bite its predator.