I’ve had a lot of pet lizards. Here’s a monitor lizard who has the run of the house (“Oh, boy, dog-food!”). My iguana slept in his cage and did his, er, business there, but the rest of the time he was on the loose. He was good at making friends with dogs and cats. I’m telling you–there’s more to lizard-minds and hearts than you might think. So much more!
That’s a very handsome fellow — a kind of cross between a crocodile and a rattlesnake, but a lot more lovable. What do monitor lizards normally eat? And how long do they live?
I had a nice savannah monitor for a while. She ate mice–which I deeply regret, and which led to my having a lot of pet mice–and chicken necks. But she came down with a fatty liver, requiring lots of veterinary care, and obliged me to medicate her every day, for which she never forgave me. I had to find a new home for her, which I did–a man affiliated with the Staten Island Zoo, who’d remodeled his whole house to keep a menagerie of snakes and lizards. She was very happy to wind up there: would have purred, if she’d known how.
I also had a baby Nile monitor, who became fast friends with my iguana; but I couldn’t get her to eat, and she didn’t live long. *Sigh* She was a very nice, friendly creature.
What an amazing looking creature. Imagine if it were 10 feet long … just a second, they do make them in that size. 🙂