Being a Reptile Person

 

Figment, my Bearded Dragon

I never thought I'd be a reptile person.

When I used to think of reptile people, I would picture people who wear a lot of black tee shirts printed with the logos of obscure bands.  With a lot of tattoos.  And piercings... lots of piercings.

In fact, when I did my master's project on companion animals in a classroom setting, I wasn't entirely sure what to include as far as reptiles went.  Did they even COUNT as companion animals?  Many keepers, it seemed, treated them as living artwork... collecting high-priced and unusually colored specimens and storing them in large "rack tubs," like the sliding plastic drawers my friend Cathy uses to organize her scrapbooking and crafting materials.  Others displayed them in aquarium tanks or specialized terrariums, rather like terrestrial goldfish.

I did try to like them - reptiles, that is.  (I already liked the reptile people I'd met.)  I wanted a classroom pet, and because furry or feathered pets were out of the question due to student allergies and building air quality concerns, I thought I might want to try a pet of the scaly variety.  Snakes were out of the question - though I had a soft spot for the lovely orange, red, and yellow corn snakes I'd seen in a pet shop, and though I found the western varieties of garter snakes with their bright blue and red checker-mark patterns gorgeous, my mother is deathly afraid of snakes and would never come visit me during the summer were I to keep one in my house.  Besides, most snakes require regular feedings of rats and mice, and those look too much like pets to me.

At first, I thought I'd try a bearded dragon - reputed to be one of the most people-centric and "affectionate" reptile pets that is still manageable in size.  I quickly nixed that idea when I realized that a grown beardie of the species most commonly kept as a pet - the Inland Bearded Dragon, or Pogona vitticeps - requires a home that measures at least 4'x2', and I just didn't have that kind of space in my classroom.  I could, I realized, house a smaller species of bearded dragon, however.

Enter the Rankin's Bearded Dragon, Pogona henrilawsonii.  At half the size of a grown P. vitticeps, the Rankin's dragon was notable for needing a far, far smaller living space.  And, I was told, they enjoy being housed together... so why not get two?  I searched the Internet for breeders - for a species that seemed so eminently suited for pethood, they weren't easy to find - and finally ordered a pair from a Georgia breeder.  Enter Steve and Irwin.  Steve and Irwin were, as I had read, smaller than the traditional beardie.  They were easy to keep in a 3' long terrarium.  They were easy to feed, subsisting mainly on insects and greens.

And they had all the personality of a pair of sticks.

My students were not enamored.  Steve and Irwin sat on their tree branch and didn't do, well, ANYTHING.  They did not like being handled.  They were not affectionate or people-oriented in the slightest.  They preferred people who wanted to look, but not touch.  Not exactly the sort of critters you would call companionable animals, let alone companion animals.  (To be fair to Steve and Irwin, at a much later date, I realized that no young dragon of any species really enjoys handling - they need to be accustomed to it over time - and that personality in bearded dragons develops after they are about a year old.  To be fair to me, there really wasn't a lot of material out there that would let me know this at the time.)

Higgins

I placed an ad on Craigslist and sent them off to a reptile keeper who was thrilled to have them, sticklike personalities and all.

I tried a tortoise after that.  My next-door teacher had a Redfoot tortoise named Henry, who was
personable in the way that Steve and Irwin hadn't been.  Henry looked at you when you approached his habitat.  Henry would munch on a proffered leaf of lettuce if you held one out.  Henry, howerver, was a bit bigger than I wanted for my classroom - about the size of a loaf of bread - and so I did some research and decided upon the Russian Tortoise as my next class pet.  I named her Higgins.

Higgins arrived smaller than the diameter of an English muffin.  On the first morning after I got her, I panicked my entire class when I checked her habitat and could not find her anywhere.  Students were soon crawling on all fours all over the classroom, looking under everything that could be looked under, even calling her name (which wouldn't have mattered in the slightest - she never did learn to come when called).  We soon discovered that baby Russian Tortoises like to bury themselves in their substrate, filling in the hole behind them.  It is excellent camouflage.  If we had been predators wanting to eat her, we'd have been out of a meal.

Higgins was everything that Steve and Irwin were not.  She not only displayed a lively interest in the people looking into her habitat, she had her favorites... she would follow one of my teacher's assistants back and forth.  She loved to be hand fed, and during dandelion season, students brought her baggies full of fresh picked dandelion greens and flowers.  When I brought my class outside for lessons, Higgins came outside, too.  She was absurdly easy to keep - her droppings were small, her needs minimal, her diet predictable and easy to fulfill.  Why, I wondered, had I never had a tortoise before?

At home, over the summer, I created a spacious outdoor paddock for Higgins out of a kiddie pool and planted it with leafy greens she would enjoy.  She could burrow or bask as she wished and occasionally escaped, but was always found in the corner of the yard where the raspberry bushes grew, munching on low-hanging berries.  She grew healthy and strong, with none of the "pyramiding" of the shell that ill-kept tortoises develop.  I loved that little tortoise.

And then the district decided, quite out of the blue, that no teacher who was not a science teacher would be allowed classroom pets of any sort.  As the pet of a language arts teacher, that meant that Higgins was out of a home within the halls of academia... and I was faced with a problem.  

Higgins had grown to a size that required a much larger habitat - a tortoise table, in fact, which is in construction similar to a bookcase flipped on its back, often supported by legs.  The recommended size for a tortoise table to house a mature Russian is 8'x4' at the minimum.  Henry, the Redfoot tortoise next door, lived in a smallish rabbit cage when he wasn't free-roaming the classroom.  I felt I had to do better for Higgins.

After flinching and remembering how I had thought that I couldn't fit a 4'x2' Bearded Dragon tank in the classroom, and after wondering briefly how I would manage a habitat twice those dimensions, I'd mustered my courage and had been planning to build Higgins a multilevel classroom tortoise table to try to maximize the amount of required floorspace.  What would work for my classroom, unfortunately, would not work once I had to house Higgins at home.

Even a split-level tortoise table would not fit well in the living space of our 1,100 square foot ranch home.  It would take up a sizable chunk of our living room, which was problematic enough, but as I soon discovered upon moving Higgins in, our cats liked to use the tortoise habitat as a cat litter box... and use the basking area for their own basking.  I considered enclosing the space on all sides using a puppy X pen and chicken wire, but the cats kept finding ways in... or onto... the desired warm spots.  I contemplated housing Higgins in the basement, but the thought of exiling my personable little shelled friend to the land of cobwebs and laundry didn't sit well with me.  

In my world, when you take in a pet, you give that pet the best possible life you are capable of.  As a teacher, I felt it was my duty to model not just "acceptable" animal husbandry, but EXCEPTIONAL animal husbandry.  If you cannot provide an exceptional life for your pet, and if you've exhausted all other options, there is no shame in locating someone who can.  Reptiles are kinder to their keepers in this respect than cats and dogs are; I've never heard of a reptile who grieved its former home, so long as the home it went on to provided appropriate care.

I contacted Higgins' breeder, who happened to also run Turtle Rescue of Long Island.  Thankfully, she was not the judgmental sort, and assured me that if she did not keep Higgins herself, she would have no problem finding her a good home.  Higgins went off with many tears on my part, but not so much as a backward glance on hers.

After that, I dropped the idea of reptiles for quite some time.

I knew that, for me, a pet needed to be personable and people-oriented.  It also needed to fit into my limited living space.  Since at the time Higgins left I was breeding and showing gerbils, space was at a premium; one entire room of our home was devoted to my critters, and we were up to our eyeballs in rodents.  

It was only after my very patient husband discovered that he was allergic not only to cats but to rodents of all sorts that reptiles crossed my mind again.

The gerbils were long gone.  The parakeets, too.  Two rats, for whom we had driven clear to the Maine border to adopt, had been returned to their rescue - they were fear biters, unlike my earlier beloved Ratboys, and my husband's allergies had gotten worse, besides.  We were down to two dogs, two cats, and a couple of goldfish.

Jarvis

I was still not convinced that a reptile could be the sort of pet I was looking for.  I thought wistfully of Higgins, knowing that we still could not fit a tortoise table into the house.  I tried a leopard gecko, who was exceptionally cute (besides being brightly colored, they have lovely eyes and a permanently smiling face) and could live in a twenty gallon aquarium tank; Jarvis stayed for quite some time, but was not all that different to my way of thinking than my goldfish, except for the fact that Jarvis didn't mind at all being held.  He was eventually passed on to a colleague who wanted him for a classroom pet.  (Yes, the colleague taught science.)

I very nearly called it quits on reptiles after that.

To be honest, the reptiles I had crossed paths with had taught me that yes, I did LIKE reptiles.  I liked having them around, liked that they were slightly less demanding than cats and dogs, liked their alien nature.  It was the personality that was the problem - personality, and housing.  Species that had a "big personality" had an exponentially large need for a sizable living space.  And when you live in a tiny ranch house, you're limited in terms of reptile furnishings.  I suppose if you wanted to create a coffee table / tortoise table for your living room it could be managed, or if you didn't mind giving up a sofa in favor of an extra large terrarium.  Recently, I've seen people who have managed incredible feats of interior decorating with reptile habitats as a centerpiece.  But at the time, I wasn't one of those people.  

Still, I had a yen for another pet... one I was determined, come hell or high water, to keep this time.

I started reading books.  I watched YouTube videos... Clint's Reptiles, with its handy rating system for reptile pets, was a favorite right from the start (at the time, Leopard Geckos had the highest overall rating, followed up by Bearded Dragons).  I went to reptile expos.  I browsed websites, read magazine articles, created a pros and cons list.  I talked with my husband, with reptile owners, with perfect strangers I met in the reptile section at Petco.

I came to one realization:  I had started this journey wanting a Bearded Dragon, and never along the winding road of pet ownership had I actually GOTTEN that Bearded Dragon.  It was still true that I could not fit a four foot long tank in my classroom... but now that I had stopped my gerbil breeding, I could fit one in my house.  Unlike a tortoise table, a four foot terrarium could be managed in the computer room where the gerbils had once lived.  In fact, it would fit in there quite well.

And so to Figment.

I had every intention of getting Figment from a good breeder.  I had been lurking around Fire and Ice Dragons, lusting after the vibrant yellows and pristine whites that establishment produces.  I'd heard wonderful things about Daichu Dragons, about their quality and health and the helpfulness of the husband and wife who ran that breeding program.  But I fell in love with a charming little beardie in the Petco nearest my home, and when that little dragon got sold the very day I'd come to buy him, I kinda lost my head and became fixated on getting a dragon NOW.  

Impulse buying is not something I'd recommend to anyone as an appropriate way to bring any pet into the home... particularly when I knew very well that I could have waited a week and gotten my Daichu dragon from a reptile expo... but I found Figment in another Petco and scooped him up.  Would I do the same again?  Nope.  I've learned too much about "big box" pet retailers and where their poor animals come from to be okay with that.  Do I regret getting Figment to begin with?  Not for a heartbeat.

Figment as a Baby

In the two years (give or take a few months) since I've had Figment, he's proven to be everything I'd
wanted in a reptile pet.  He has been healthy, personable, and pleasant to interact with.  I have truly enjoyed setting up his home in my corner office... I use and recommend Zen Habitats, who make custom sized 4'x2'x2' Bearded Dragon abodes.  Having a terrarium is like having a dollhouse for a scaly little doll... what you make of it is entirely up to you, but you can go full-bore bioactive and have a planted ecosystem in a box - or furnish the tank with a tiled floor, plush beds and couches, hammocks, and climbing structures.  

Figment is also an easy keeper, though he was a veritable bug vacuum for the first year of his life (and nobody, but nobody, tells new owners that they'll be dropping a hundred a month on mail order insects for the first year).  He loves his salads now, though as a hatchling he couldn't have cared less for them, and it's fun to watch him eat his greens and insect treats.  He seems to enjoy being petted and held, though he also loves his daily walkabouts of the computer room.  He will watch you inquisitively when you approach his tank and seems to listen when you talk to him, though if you're busy and don't have time for daily play sessions, he's quite forgiving (as long as dinner arrives on schedule).  I've enjoyed being part of the online Bearded Dragon community - I prefer, and recommend, www.beardeddragon.org as a helpful, informative forum where there is little to no drama.  

And I've even started wondering if I can, in fact, fit a four foot long tank in my classroom next year, so Figment can come back and forth to school with me.