Lizard Lounge

A friend of mine (hi Darlene!) asked me once if I ever write about my lizards. I did once, but that article was about how lizards make great pets for disabled folks. Now I'll talk about the current lizards I have.

I have a breeding colony of Leopard Geckos that I got 2 months ago. I have 5 females, and 1 male. The male's name is Don Juan. He's a playa. His beeotches names are: Anita, Bonita, Chiquita, Dorito, and Ethel. Ethel is an albino, Anita, Bonita and DJ are "jungle designer phase", and Chiquita and Dorito are "jungle designer high yellow". Got all that? They are all Tremper Geckos (he's a well-known and highly respected gecko breeder in Boerne, TX).

I plan on breeding them, but right now they are too young to produce babies. I don't necessarily want to breed for money, just for fun. Something new to try!

Here's pix of some of the geckos (click pix to enlarge):

This is "Dorito". She's handicapped, like me! She has one rear leg that bends the wrong way. I don't know if it's from an injury or a birth defect. I'll have to wait till she has babies and see if she passes it on to them.

This is "DJ". He has an orange section on his tail that helps me tell him apart from the girls. He's also very sweet and climbs right onto my hand.

The next lizard I have is Baby Doll, the Prehensile-tailed Skink. She's 26" long from nose to tail, 1/2 of her length is that prehensile tail. Like the geckos, she's nocturnal. She's also arboreal, meaning she likes to climb. I made her a climbing tree using a fake ficus from Garden Ridge. I keep her tank open and at night she likes to climb up into her tree. What's even cooler is she climbs back down to her tank if she has to poop! Trained!

Not exactly a lizard, but this is Dave. He's a Gulf Coast Toad. I found him in my backyard (yes, I caught him myself. Slow toad!). He lives in a 15 gallon tank with a nice "pond" on one side. Also nocturnal, and fun to watch eat with that zippy tongue!

In the past, I've also owned a Bearded Dragon (Billie the Kid), a Texas Alligator Lizard (James), and I had 4 Uromastyx (Janet, LaToya, Michael, Tito).

When we first got Frankie and realized what a handful he was, I decided to give up all my lizards. I just couldn't handle caring for them and training Frankie. But, now that Frankie is fully trained and going thru his transition period, I felt ready again to own reptiles. Thanks to my good friend LisaOJ for convincing me that I needed something more to keep busy. Reptiles do that for me.


My next article will be about the Crested Gecko. These are another wonderful, easy-to-care-for lizard that I would like to own someday!