These Australian bearded dragons have become very popular as pets, and from a lot of videos you can see why.
You wouldn’t believe how tiny they are as babies. The grow up to be nice hefty lizards and it seems you can have a lot of fun with them. I think they get to thinking that they’re mammals. My iguana was like that.
(Note: I watched Mr. Bean this afternoon and am all the better for it.)
I don’t know why, but today I got to reminiscing how my mother fell under the spell of my lizards. Not that she would ever touch one! Heavens no. You would’ve heard the scream…
But that didn’t stop her from walking up and down our florabunda rose hedge with a jar in her hand, catching bugs for my anoles (which they greatly appreciated). And when it came to feeding my iguana, she took pains to prepare really nice salads for him. The lizard in the picture looks a lot like mine, and that lovely salad looks just like the ones she used to make. “Just like Mama used to make” probably doesn’t conjure up visions of happy iguanas chowing down; but to me it does.
Oh, Ma, you were good to my little pets. You would’ve loved those baby fence lizards that we hatched from eggs (with helpful advice from the Staten Island Zoo). Not enough to handle them–but that didn’t really matter, did it?
And no, she didn’t care at all for the thousand tiny praying mantises we hatched out of what we thought was a butterfly cocoon.
A bridge too far
Jambo. You are about to see a little “pet store chameleon” (a green anole, actually: not a real chameleon) decide he’s in the mood for love. He’ll try to attract the female by showing his dewlap and doing a lot of head-bobbing.
These same gestures are also used to threaten rivals.
Head-bobbing intrigues me because so many unrelated lizards, thousands of miles apart geographically, do it–and for the same reasons: courtship, threat, defense of territory. This is an aspect of lizard life that has no way of being preserved in any fossil record. Which in turn is a reminder that we don’t know an awful lot about animals–especially prehistoric ones.
None of my lizards ever head-bobbed at me. I must be a nice guy.
Oddly enough, real chameleons don’t head-bob.
I know some of you have bearded dragons. Do they eventually give up head-bobbing–or do they always find some occasion for it?
See? Toldja. As soon as the comment contest is over, the comments dry up.
But remember, boys ‘n’ girls (here we only recognize the two sexes God has made, and no “genders” that idiots have made up), the next contest has already started! We are at 33,145 and shooting for 35,000–that’s just 2,855 to go.
Ah! But I hear you ask–well, I imagine that I hear you ask–“What’s he doin’ with that lizard?” Not much. It’s Sunday, and I would rather not write about any of the nooze today. And I like lizards.
That little guy up there is a European wall lizard, or lacerta. We used to have a pair of those. They were the first lizards we ever had that mated and laid eggs. Unfortunately, we were never aware of the eggs until it was too late to move them to a friendlier substrate, and they were all dried out. I would have loved to see the hatchlings: they would’ve been like living jewels.
The male escaped, somehow, and was gone for six months. Then he turned up again, fat and sassy, like nothing had happened. I put him back with his mate. She used to treat me to a threat display before accepting food from my fingers. They pretty much thrived on Mighty Dog, but live insects were always welcome.
See? No news! Piece of cake.
