Kreature Sun Bathing

Kreature's cage ended up in my craft room/front room which faces North and gets no sunshine. I've been anxious for him to discover the sunny spots on my living room floor (which faces South), but he never had.

Until today.

Kreature came out for his normal drink of water and to poop (thankfully on the tile this time!). Then he discovered a patch of sun on the kitchen floor and basked in it. Sadly, I kept taking pics of his adorable basking and that irritated him.

He left the kitchen and wandered into the living room.

Ah ha! The sun!

He found it and would NOT leave.

Which would have been fine had it been any other day. But today is Valentine's day and I had signed up to help with a 3rd grade class party. And, of course, he found the sun 8 minutes before I had to leave.

Kreature shifted around so he could get optimal sun on him.

He tried to keep his eyes open as he laid there in the sun, but it was a lost cause. His eyelids got heavier and heavier. Here he is with "Half Eyes."

After a few moments, he was OUT. If I didn't have to leave for the school, I think I might have curled up in the sunny spot on the couch and taken a nap with him.

Instead I went to help keep 3rd graders entertained and left my daughter to make sure that Otis and the other critters didn't get TOO friendly with a sleeping Kreature. He's friendly-- but not during nap time or dinner time.

Welcome to Hormone Season!

On Sunday, my hubby turned to me and said "The beardies are going crazy today! What is wrong with them?"

Yesterday, my friend, who helps me clean, asked me "Does the vacuum scare the lizards? They are very active today!"

Nope.

It's the start of hormone season.

Oy vay!

Look at these guys-- you can see how alert they are for my pics.

Max

A month ago, all my big boys were slugs. They barely moved, barely ate, barely opened their eyes.

Smaug

All of the sudden, it's like they drink energy drinks every morning and spend the day trashing their tanks and glass dancing.

Neville

Yesterday, I heard the pattering of little feet & claws across my wood floor. Somehow Neville figured out how to escape. Ay yi yi!

Ziggy

Their cages are a disaster. They poop and then finger paint with it. Their food bowls are constantly being shoved against the glass. Their water dishes look more like nasty water troughs in a cattle feed lot.

I have to dump the greens quickly and jerk my hand out of the tank so I don't get bit! They devour the greens within moments of getting them. Their beards are perpetually black and, in their minds, there is *always* something to bob their heads at.

Hormone season starts around now and lasts for a couple months.

Yes, months.

I know. I'm shaking my head too.

Beardies can SMELL each other. And their smells are very strong right now. So even if your beardies can't SEE each other, they know the others are there. This is why I am toast. My house & my tanks will be crazy for awhile and my house will only be quiet at night when it's dark.

Good luck to all of us!

Things Overheard at my House, edition 2

-No! No mating during breakfast! 

-Don't bite the dog! He's not your dinner! 

-Did you HAVE to poop on the carpet?! 

-I just cleaned your tank, Dude! This is why you can't have nice things! 

-Otis! Can you stay out of the kitchen please?! 

-Would anybody else like to poop before I leave the house?! 

-Fingers are friends, not food!! 

-Put that back! 

-That's not a roach! Hey! OW! Not a roach!! 

-Have you ever thought about just drinking out of your water dish?! Take a sip. Try it sometime. 

-Don't step on the tortoise! 

-That is not your food! You are not a tortoise! 

-Ooooh! Scary! (In a baby voice) You's a scary widdle 'um. 

Then I hear things like this from my hubby and kids: "If I overheard you just now and didn't know you had a house full of animals, I'd be very very concerned." 

Sun Therapy

The sun is shining brightly in Utah today! Woo hoo! I'm using the opportunity to give the two baby beardies some direct UVB. I'm hoping that the sun will help perk them both up.

Instinctively, they both flattened out and turned their bodies to the sun when they felt it.

Here's Raptor:

Here's Delta:

Blocking Otis

Otis, my 4 year old cherry head tortoise, is very anxious for Spring. He is very anxious to go outside and frolic (or whatever tortoises do outside in a yard full of grass). He gets bored being stuck in the house and, sometimes, he decides to mount my leopard tortoise, Georgie. Georgie is *not* into to be mounted or mated or looked at or nibbled on or touched or talked to or moved or pet. She is a very solitary tortoise that we let out so she can bask under the mercury vapor bulb in our kitchen for a change of pace. She too is very excited to go back outside for the summer. This summer will be the first time that she is big enough to free roam the yard and not be stuck in the "Babies Box." She's very excited. Until then, she has to avoid Otis and his occasional desire to mate.

While I worked on my computer, I kept an eye on Otis & Georgie who were basking together by my feet. It went really well for awhile, but then Otis felt amorous. Oy vay! So I blocked him with my foot.

At first, he attempted to eat my foot because it looked tasty somehow. No, Otis! No biting!

When I moved my foot so it wasn't in his mouth, he tried to sneak under my leg. 

That was it for Otis and he was relocated to the living room where he could wander around at will.

We are definitely all dreaming of Spring here.

My Chaotic Craft Room

My craft room is where my Etsy shop magic happens. Mostly. It also happens at my desk in the kitchen with my laptop, printer, and postage machine.

But the front room, turned craft room, called Etsy room is where I "work."

And it's pretty much a disaster currently. And by "Currently" I mean, this year.

You walk in my front door and find 4 tanks. To the right is my craft room/Etsy shop/library/whatever. You have to walk buy 3 large beardies, a 6 pound snake, and a 20 pound lizard to get into my living room and the rest of the house. It's like a Courage Test. Or it's like that one weird part on the movie "The Neverending Story" where the main guy had to walk past the big angel statue thingies that shot lasers from their eyes. If you're not brave, you can't come in. Ha!

This is the view from just inside the front door. Chaos? Yes. ;) But I did finally put away all the extra Christmas supplies!

I have lots and lots and lots of supplies & stuff. Lots. And I actually know where most of it is! ... sorta.... Give me a few minutes and I can find it. 

I have a tegu in my craft room. Kreature's box is about to be upgraded and I haven't found the time to clean this one and upgrade it to the bigger one. This one spills dirt and bark all over the floor and the top of it becomes a resting spot for homeless items in my house. 

I'm still retraining Kreature on how to poop on the tile, or in his box, or on the pee pads (which is what he did when I first had him). He's not learning very quickly and that's why I have a couple poop stains on my carpet. Thank goodness we have a carpet cleaner in the garage! 

I have a plan for cleaning this room but it's similar to that great kids' book "If you give a Mouse a Cookie." I need to switch the tegu cage, but then I'd have to move the empty blue tongue skink cage, which will require me to make room in the garage which will require.... And so it goes. 

My life is sort of an organized chaos. I can find and get most everything I need to keep functioning. Sometimes things get really lost-- like the 3rd pair of feeding tongs I cannot find. And what on earth did I do with those syringes I got from the vet yesterday? I put them in a drawer, but I can't remember *which* drawer. 

When you live in a zoo, you gotta expect some amount of chaos and a healthy dose of poop. People ask me all the time what it's like running a rescue. This is my frequent response: "It's about Poop, lots and lots of poop." :) 

Thanks to all you who read my blog and buy from my Etsy shop. You are helping me pay my credit card bill off after the most recent trip to the vet. In this business, trust me, there is ALWAYS a recent trip to the vet (like yesterday). 

Dreaming of Spring

The high today in Utah was over 60 degrees!!! It was fantastic! My zoo & I are so anxious for Spring and sunshine and warmer temps.

I opened the back door for awhile to let the warm air in. Otis stared longingly into the backyard.

Then Teddy joined him in admiring the snow free backyard.

Teddy decided to go out while Otis wasn't quite ready to try it out. 

Because it was warm enough, I took Smaug with me to go run a couple of "pet friendly" errands. I took a picture of him on my shoulder when I stopped at a stoplight. He stayed very mellow and looked all around him. 

At the vet, he attracted quite a bit of attention. 

Then I ran in to get some frozen feeder rats at my local pet store (my local feeder rat supplier had a virus wipe out their entire colony and I'm anxiously waiting for them to start selling feeders again!). He got a few odd looks. 

I can't wait for Spring! Warm temps! Walks to school! Tortoises pooping outside instead of on the kitchen floor! Woo hoo! 

Another post about Sand

If you've read this blog, you've ready *many* posts about the dangers of sand. I'm not going to get in to that. You can click the "Sand" label at the bottom of this post and it will take you to other posts where I rant about how bad sand is. For this post, I want to focus on the aesthetics of sand.

One- sand makes your beardie dirty & stained. Look at the difference between Noel's belly after being on a solid substrate and being on sand. The sand side of the picture shows when his belly started to shed. The solid substrate side shows how clean his leg is until it reaches the old skin that hasn't shed off yet.

Gross, huh?

Two, sand & the even-worse walnut shell STINKS! Hand me a beardie and let me smell him and I can tell you right away if he's on sand or on a solid surface. Sand beardies smell SOOOO BAD! It's hard to keep the sand clean and bug/parasite free and it breeds stinkiness.

So get your beardie on a solid surface (tile, slate, laminate, shelf liner, paper towels) than for no other reason than you want him/her to be prettier and smell better. Their guts & digestion will thank you too.

Geckos Update

The male gecko is shedding today! Did you know that leopard geckos eat their shed skin? It's actually a good thing for them to do. Crazy, huh?

Here he is in his moist hide.  Yes, it's a sour cream container with damp sphagnum moss in it.

The female is getting ready to shed too. 

Both are eating well and fairly active. The female was spinning in her tank this morning-- a sign of her Enigma syndrome. It's not contagious but it is aggravated by stress. My guess is that her shedding skin is irritating some of her wounds. I've had to stop soaking her because it pulled the scabs off her feet and then she'd bleed continually. 

Overalll, they are both doing great. They are in the sunshine in my room on "Gccko Row."

Honestly, I've never been a big fan of leopard geckos. I prefer the personalities of beardies more than geckos. I plan to keep these three for now and let them all get healthy. Plus, I need to come up with a name for the male & female. I will one day-- when I'm inspired. Or when I stop long enough to think about it. ;) 

Sunny Babies

In the few moments of sunshine coming through my morning windows, my two babies got to bask for a little bit.

Delta in the sun:

Raptor in the sun: