This is our story.
A couple years ago we bought Jackson a bearded dragon for his 6th birthday -- why? how? Well, it stemmed from our vacation in St. John, USVI where there were tons of anoles (tiny lizards) on the island and he fell in love. So why not. We purchased the $60 thing from PetSmart and learned shortly after that decision that we needed another $200 in UV lights, heat lamps, bedding, a 20 gallon terrarium, things to crawl on and just bearded dragon 'stuff'. Sheesh. So fine. And just when I thought we were done spending so much, when I thought the hard pellets sold in PetSmart were enough food, I come to find out from the REAL experts on beardeddragon.org (yes, I ended up subscribing and reading the forums regularly for info) that they needed LIVE insects for proper nutrition!! Are you kidding?! Well therein lies the insane cycle of life. A couple weeks later I ended up buying a 66 gallon sterlite container and 500 crickets (the right size of course b/c the dragon could choke on them if they are too big) at a time! Jack patiently made the screen top for the darn things to breathe and I purchased them every few weeks from a cricket farm (oh, yes they do exist) in Tennessee. But wait -- it doesn't end there. The crickets needed to be fed too and dusted with calcium. OF COURSE THEY DID! So I had weird gelatin food in their container and water and geez, I could go on. So there you have it -- our little pet, became as expensive and time-consuming to maintain as any ordinary domestic pet! I even had an exotic pet vet who I visited 3x (at $100 a pop!) and a leash and hammock for our dear "Mac" as he was called. It became a slight obsession -- not b/c I don't like to do things well when I do them but b/c it required daily attention! He was a baby after all!
So sadly, fast forward about 9 months, he didn't make it. After antibiotics for a parasite infection (we know b/c I had to take a stool sample IN to the exotic pet vet) he was too small to fight the infection -- a common killer of the bearded dragon. It was crushing. All that attention, effort, love and madness. We buried him rightly in the woods behind our house and still think fondly of Mac.
So just when I thought we were done with reptiles -- our good friends found 3 baby box turtles last fall and when we were there over New years marveling at their tiny shells and heads, they ended up asking us if we wanted one. How could we say NO? The boys begged. And we didn't. So we have added "Henry" to our busy daily life. Heck, we had the terrarium and lights and I know reptiles, so it's been cheaper this time! I'm happy to report, they are much easier to manage than the dragon-fest world. Tho, they are much more boring to watch! An occasional mealworm (yes, I buy those and feed that to them too) gets them going and that 10 minutes is pretty exciting. So this weekend, we are turtle-sitting the other two while our friends ski for the weekend.
Ironically, an hour after our friend Steve called to ask if we could turtlesit, Jackson's best friend from school asked us if we would dragonsit his new bearded dragon. They knew we had all the know-how and confidence to take care of it, so we have "Dan" here too.
Meet them all and I know you're all jealous of my incredible ability to learn about something other than photography or cooking. I mean how many people do you know that can tell you details about dragons?
No comments:
Post a Comment