Reptile Rumbler

Oh he is doing so much better! Doesn’t want to eat my face every time I pick him up anymore. Definitely a boy. Got good-sized femoral pores. Love that lizard!

My turtle likes to ride on the dashboard of my car. He looks out the window and every time a car passes he pulls his head inside his shell. Sometimes when I take a corner too fast he goes sliding. Pretty funny…

So my iguana has extremely sharp fingernails. So last night I set out to clip them. We did really well! I was only able to clip four toes but even that will help. My arms and hands are cut up something fierce. The biggest mistake I made so far was when he ran up my arm and I grabbed him to get him down. He dug his claws in and as I pulled he dug in deeper and I ended up with some impressive upper arm scratches. I will never do that again! I put him in the bathroom while the kids showered. He sat up on a cupboard door and soaked in the moisture. I have to get some cat toenail clippers cause the dog ones I have are way too big.

Every morning, we have a routine we follow at my house to ensure safety of both pets and human belongings. First, we have to feed the dogs. I have one dog that makes sure I awake on time. When she first sees me stirring, she will jump up and put her front two giant paws right directly on my face. I don’t know how she always manages to find my face, but she does. If the face is not available, the tender portion of my back works also. So then I get up, and my next dog yawns and talks. Arr uuu! That’ll get you up also. I need to teach him how to make words. I have a third dog that is in the kennel, so she is good till I get dressed. If I can get dressed, cause when I sit down to put shoes on, I have a dog on each side either licking my fingers or pawing at my hands. It’s insane. I then feed the dogs, and I have one that will bump my food cup with her face, causing me to spill the food all over the floor. I have to feed them in order, so we don’t upset the dominance hierarcy. By this time, I have let the little one out of her kennel. She will not eat unless you are watching her. She will lower her head and look up at you through eyes that look like they will bulge out of her head if she sneezes. Then she raises her left front paw. You tell her to eat, and she will. Crazy. After dogs are fed, they go outside. Where they immediately start barking at everything. They bark at leaves, squirrels, kids, cars, their own shadows…

After dogs, we have kids to get ready. I have two boys and a girl. The girl is a tween, so if you can get her out of the bathroom in 20 minutes, you have achieved a modern-day miracle. The boys will get dressed, put shoes on, and eat breakfast just so they can play Nintendo before school. Most days. There are occassions where they have no pants. Even though they do have clean pants, they are not the PANTS they want to wear that day. Then all hell breaks loose. Most times, I don’t care and let them dig the pants they DO want to wear out of the dirty clothes. Nothing Axe Body Spray won’t fix! Do your own damn laundry, I say. And they do! Yeah! My daughter tried to do laundry once, but she broke the knob and it is now run with the aid of a hair scrunchie.

Kids ready, time for reptiles. I have a whole room devoted to the reptiles. I have a Russian tortoise named Frappuchino, a green iguana named Buddy, a corn snake named Rocky, and a red tailed boa named Sweetie. They are so very awesome. They have their own room, where the temperature is kept just warm enough to make humans develop a nice sheen when you’re in there. The big snake and the iguana have lights on timers, but you have to turn the others’ lights and off every day. They are all kept on a strict schedule of day 7 am to 9 pm. This keeps it very uniform. The turtle and the iguana eat greens, and I have a huge ice cream tub of a variety of greens in the fridge. I actually spend about an hour every Sunday preparing this tub, which gets us through the week. The turtle eats (and poops) a LOT! He has a cat dish of food in his tank. The iguana goes through eating spurts. Sometimes he eats a ton, sometimes he will go a whole day without eating. I recently discovered they do not like kale. They will go through every green in their dish and leave each piece of kale. Even if I chop it up into small pieces. It’s actually quite amazing.

When you feed the iguana, you have to be careful he doesn’t jump out at you. He tends to do that, especially if you scare him. You can’t just go in and whip open the door. You have to talk gently to him, and let him know who you are. He doesn’t like me when I wear my glasses, has no idea who I am. So I take my glasses off to be in his tank. Odd, I know. He will also tail whip you if you are too close to him when you open the door. It doesn’t hurt too bad now, but will when he gets bigger! He will be a year old at the end of March.

The snakes only get fed once a week, sometimes every two weeks (depends on if I forget). They are good to go because they can lower their metabolisms if they are hungry. I don’t feed my big snake a lot cause I don’t want her to grow too big too fast. My baby corn snake needs to be fed more often, cause he is three and is still really small… Maybe I should start posting some sticky notes somewhere as reminders.

There you have it, my feeding routines. My kids help a lot, and they are getting better about helping me. I am getting better about letting them, also. The animals are easily broken and can easily bite you, so I make sure the kids know what they are doing before they go sticking their hands in tanks. We will have some of those animals for a really long time, so I want my kids to know how to take care of them so they can take a couple with them when they move out… Iguanas live 15 years, so does the corn snake. Big snake 30 years, turtle 100 years. We are in it for the long haul!

Today was a lazy day. My dogs went outside and played in the mud. We had to block off the kitchen, dry them off, then mop the mud off the floor. Then I let the iguana out to run around. Kid 1 said let’s introduce him to the turtle. So we put both of them down and I think they will be good friends. U have to be careful though cause the iguana doesn’t like people. So my hubby came in to talk to me and my iguana jumped out of my hands and ran away. He is very skittish (iguana not husband). My iguana doesn’t like it when I wear my glasses. Doesn’t know who I am…

Perplexed…

I love talking about my animals. This includes both the kid animals and the animal animals. I have three kids, three dogs, two snakes, a turtle, an iguana, and a fish. We usually have some good daily stories…