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!

Neville in the Window

One of my favorite things about rescue is giving beardies a new & happy experience. Today I put Neville in a sunny window. I bet that this was the first time he has ever been in a sunny window.

And he loved it.

We are all dreaming about spring & summer arriving when all the critters can go back outside.

Hammocks!

My friend Mary has been sewing hammocks for me to sell in my Etsy shop and they are SO soft. Today I added two more hammocks to my tanks-- one for Smaug and one for Neville. Dash & Noel have their hammocks already.

 Smaug on his chevron print:

Neville on his brown hammock:

Dash hardly moves out of his. He's been very happy to lounge on his all day & all night.

I think I'm going to try giving one to Max and Tiger too. They are super soft and machine washable. It's one of the best things in my shop.

Click HERE for more info.

Beware! He's Super Fierce & Ferocious!

Here is Neville who I was warned was "aggressive." ;) It must have been because he didn't have a blankie to snuggle in! 

I think beardies are as aggressive as we allow them to be. Neville huffed and puffed at me when I first got him, and I just laughed at him. When I reach into his tank, he puffs up and takes a defensive pose, and I laugh at him. When I hold him, he kind of thrashes around and I talk to him nicely and pet his head. The first time I held him, it took him two hours to relax enough to go sleep. The second time, he was asleep within minutes. Last night, as soon as I wrapped the blankie around him (shh, don't tell him it's a pink blankie for girls! ;) ), he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Rescue Chaos & Overlaod

My house looks like a rescue bomb went off. I got home from vacation a week ago and had vacation things and Christmas things and everyday stuff to put away. Add to that 6 separate rescues in 5 days, and my house is crazy. And I had to open my Etsy shop back up. On top of all it, I got sick while we were in California and I can't seem to get the cold out of my lungs. And it's ridiculously frozen here-- like the high is 17 degrees.

Here's the thermometer on the dashboard yesterday as I was picking up Lily and Kiwi. Ignore the dust. I obviously need to clean out my van again. 17 degrees.

Blah.

So here's an in-depth look at a few of the areas in my house where things sorta exploded.

I've tried to use my shelves to keep things organized. Um, I'm pretty much failing at this.

Once upon a time, I had a nice desk set up for writing at. Now it just holds random light bulbs- are they dead or not? I can't remember-- and random supplies I set down and never put away.

Lily & Leo are on the floor of my bedroom since all the shelf space was taken by other tanks.

We recently moved my crafty room/Etsy shop down into our front room. I think there were, like, 12 seconds when it was actually organized. Now? Nope.

Supplies from Christmas, new Etsy material I haven't listed, a Halloween decoration or two, and more tanks that didn't have anywhere else to be put.

This was originally my "Critical Care" area with Gumby, Sunny (the baby ball python), and Baby Sawyer. It keeps me from using my table for working on Etsy, but it got the tanks off my kitchen counter.

We added 8 foot bookcases in the craft room to store our massive collections of books (I love books!) and the shelves end up housing random reptile equipment too.

My fridge supplies are sorta contained to one shelf in the fridge. So I keep the Critical Care between the Oyster sauce, pineapple juice, and horseradish. Oh and the extra ketchup package from Chick-fil-A.

Also in the kitchen-- in plain sight so I don't forget-- are my baggies of syringes for the sicklies I'm feeding. They are right next to the Christmas goodies that were given to us that we haven't eaten yet.

The living room isn't quite as bad either. I've been trying to move Georgie around and put her in a bigger box by herself. She keeps getting bumped off the list and I haven't gotten around to her yet. I let her free roam a couple days ago and she's quite happy with it.

The chameleon cage-- which I keep promising myself to not use for a long time-- actually sat in the garage for a week and a half! Woo hoo! It is now back on the side table in front of two south facing windows in my living room. Kiwi is having a hard time with her back legs and so I have the bottom of her cage lined with blankets so she can't fall and hurt herself. Just in case, I also have my small cage set out in case I need to downsize her.

The grandfather clock that I inherited when my grandparents died is one of my favorite possessions in my house. I recently just got it fixed so it's back to chiming every 15 minutes. It too gets to share in the rescue chaos. It's my "Shed Storage." Here's sheds from at least 5 different snakes. Under my great horned owl puppet, there's a baggie with a lot of interesting beardie sheds.

Yesterday all of the beardie tanks were cleaned too. . . . Not that you can tell!  Dash did some serious poop painting and Neville has been rearranging his.

Maybe one of these days I'll actually get myself organized, but definitely not until I get over this stupid cold (both the one in my body and the nasty cold outside!) Can't wait until Spring!!

Noel's Hard Day

Noel seemed rather sickly today. His eyes were mostly closed and rather sunk in. He didn't move much and wasn't very alert. He had me worried. 

I took him out for some snuggle time in a blankie. That helped perk him up.

I left him on a heated corn bag on my pillow.

And then I held him on my lap in the sunshine for awhile. 

When it was time to leave, I gave him a couple cc's of warm Pedialyte and put him back in his tank. When I returned home later, I saw he had passed a pea size urate plug. I'm really hoping that this urate plug was what Dr Folland felt in Noel's belly at the vet the other day. He did seem to perk up after that.

Tonight he and Neville both got to snuggle in blankies with me. I put Noel in my shirt first so that he'd be sound asleep by the time I added Neville (just in case Neville was restless or scared). It took Neville just a few minutes to look around and unwind and then he fell fast asleep! Progress! Last night, it took him over an hour to relax enough to sleep while I held him. Great signs.

Also, Baby Sawyer seemed to poop okay today. He was a bit bloated today and I worried that he was getting constipated. Sometime this evening he was able to have a fairly normal looking poop. Woo hoo!

Reptile Roll Call for January 5, 2017

Here's most of my reptile zoo (minus the 3 ball pythons who didn't want to leave their hides to have their pictures taken; I have Lucy, Sunny, & Bones). Also, Gumby, the MBD leopard gecko didn't want to come out either.

First the Torts. I only have FOUR! That amazes me. 

Georgie, my female Leopard tortoise 

Hermy, my hibernating Desert tortoise

Leo, the happy little Russian tort

Otis, our house tort

And now my beardies-- 

Baby Sawyer, with a little pudgy food belly

Dash, my old man who is shedding

Flame, who is also shedding 

Gen, my big girl who is sorta bruminating

Max, my big boy who is 6 years old

Neville, the latest addition 

Noel, who is looking sickly this morning

Smaug, my big boy who is looking for a home as the ONLY beardie

Tiger, who has been wheezing again :( 

Ziggy, who has pretty much trashed his tank in the last few days 

 And last, but not least, Lady Squinty Dink the Dainty Skink of bluTonguesville!

Couldn't get the lighting right for a good pic 

We also have two dogs (Belle & Teddy) and a hedgehog (Pixie).

Blankie Training Neville, step one

Tonight was a good night for me to work with Neville and his grumpiness. Time to introduce him to the joys of being wrapped in a blankie!

 He was unsure of it at first, but he also didn't fight it.

Close up, he looks like he's wearing Cherry Chapstick! I love it!

I held him in his blankie while I ate an ice cream cone and then I sat down in the rocking chair and watched a cool program on PBS about Himalayan burial grounds. Neville only freaked out once when I tried to cover his head. Nope! He hated that.

I stroked his head a little bit and rocked in the rocking chair. He looked around and stayed very calm and mellow.

I held him for over an hour and wouldn't quit until I saw this:

Success!!! He was comfortable enough to fall asleep on me. I let him rest for a few minutes and then I put him back in his tank.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Earlier today, I thought back to a few of my first "Aggressive" bearded dragon rescues. They did sorta terrify me. I used to give my grumpy ones to my friend Kristin. My definition of "Aggressive" is SOOOOO different now thanks to multiple iguanas, a couple monitors, and two starving 10 foot long Burmese. Even being bitten doesn't worry me as much (not that I like it) since I've been bitten a half dozen times by mean iguanas, a Savannah monitor, and a Burmese python. It's all about perspective.

Plus, I think beardies become used to reacting a certain way and having people respond back in a certain way. If they flare up and thrash, they are used to the reaction of withdrawing. Neville did that earlier and I just laughed at him and kept holding him. I expect he'll still try to be a brat with me, but he's going to learn very quickly that I don't back off. Ha! He will like that blankie! ;)

Neville, Nigel's "brother," a new addition

Nigel was my very first rescue. He was small and sickly when I got him, but turned into a big & beautiful boy. See?

He had sandfire coloring and was a leatherback. He weighed over 500 grams.

I found this beardie on an online classified yesterday.

It was like seeing Nigel all over again! Maybe it's Nigel's brother! ;)

So...... I bought him today. (I know, I'm shaking my head). The owner used him as a breeder and warned me that he was fairly aggressive. I told him "Once you've had iguanas, the term 'aggressive' changes."

The lighting doesn't show how much his coloring is like Nigel's. Neville does have some grey-blue on his back that Nigel didn't have and he's not quite as big.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with him. But I have him now and will work on his niceness.