Caring for a Bearded Dragon

We have had lots of fun with our newest pets and have learned a few hard lesson along the way.  Firedrake is proving very responsible for caring for the reptiles, except for the picking up the poo messes, that she can't do yet:(.  So it is my job.  Just so you know, bearded dragon poo stink, really bad:(  MarioFan while interested in the reptiles is not as keen to really help and because he is so jumpy and loud the lizards are a bit nervous around him.

Every day we let the Bearded Dragon out of his cage to exercise and it gets itself into the most interesting situations.   We never leave him unattended.   This is called glass surfing, he sees his shadow on the window and tries to attack it.  It has gotten so bad that I have had to place a brown paper bag on the back of his tank to decrease the glass attacks:)

Daddy has really taken to the lizard as well and every time Isaac seems to want to climb on his head and Daddy lets him:)

While the main staple of a Bearded Dragons diet is greens they do need crickets and there is no pet store close by our home so I found I was spending too much time driving to get crickets. I decided to purchase live crickets online.  It cost as much to ship the crickets to the house as the actual box of 500 crickets.   I keep telling myself I am saving in gas money.  I bought  a size or two too small I think and the smaller the cricket the higher and faster the littler critters can jump:(  I must have a dozen or so that have escaped and are hopping about my home.  We are slowly tracking them down.  BTW  500 crickets is a lot of crickets but they don't sell them in any smaller amount sizes, still debating whether I will do this again.

Bearded Dragons need baths, so we have designated this plastic tub as Isaac's and it can be used for nothing else

He loves his warm soaks

and poos in it every single time:(

The hardest lessoned learned so far is that the heat lamps of the reptiles are incredibly hot.  Even though I warned the kids many, many time never to put the lamps on the floor...while cleaning out the tank, without thinking, I set the lamp on the rug for a moment and it burnt a hole right through the carpet.  I was so mad at my self but at least I did it and not the kids and now they can see why you never ever set the reptiles lamp on any surface. 

I have since bought lamp holders that now permanently hang the lamps so they never have to be moved about.  We didn't have these when we did the above fire demonstration.

I don't have any pictures of Lizzy our leopard gecko but she too is proving to have a bit more of a personality then our previous gecko, Sparks.  She comes out of her house to listen to the kids play piano.  She is still very nervous when held so we are working on handling her a bit more on a daily basis.