Like a Bosc!

For reasons, which defy all logic and common sense, I have always liked cats. Cats are jerks, they don't give a shit about anything but themselves, they step over you and right all over your fucking balls and show you their asshole in the process. All of it. They're the embodiment of disrespect. Some people mistake their sucking up for affection, when they really just grovel for food or a belly rub. Because the little shits have absolutely no self-respect. "I want you to stroke my belly! But only eight times! After that, I'm gonna bite you." Because they're little psychopath fucks.

And maybe it's that same sense of idiocy, which has always attracted me to stranger, more exotic pets. Rats, for instance. Back when I was a kid, rats were actually rather uncommon as pets, at least in my area. So I got myself a rat and suddenly my girlfriend had rats, my school mates had rats and in the end, even my fucking stepmother thought they were kinda cute and put my rat in her purse when she went shopping. But even without grownups thinking they're fun, rats turned out to suck. A lot. They stink. They piss and shit all the god damn time. Everywhere. Without stopping. And that makes them stink even more. They usually go blind and die of cancer two years after you buy them.

Yes, I know, you can train them to be very clever, clean, faithful little companions. Been there, done that, wasted months of my life getting them to shit in the designated corner of the cage and remain nice and clean and calm when I picked them up. And a year later they're old and just like old people, they get a little grumpy and a little weird and before you know it they're aggressive and filthy again. When my last pair of rats grew old, they became so nasty and annoying, I went to the nearest field and released them. Mabye they got another happy couple of weeks there. Maybe they got eaten by the fucking cat five minutes after I was gone. I didn't even give a shit.

Don't look at me like that! They're rodents! Vermin! Bred by the dozen, sold for a buck, designed to grow monster tumors that kill them two years into their miserable, tiny lifespan. It's not like I kicked out the goddamn dog!
For what it counts, we're planning on getting a whole lot of new rats in the future. No more cage, though. They're going straight in the freezer. As soon as our python grows too big for mice.

So yeah, reptiles. They're pretty exotic. Surprisingly enough, "unusual" pets really aren't all that special around here. There's this guy who walks up and down our street with an owl on his shoulder every other day. There's some elderly gentleman who never leaves home without his parrot. He takes him to the supermarket and they're having conversations while he's doing the shopping. I don't know whether these birds are intelligent enough to actually understand what's being said, but he's happy enough just to babble along with the old guy. Of course you do see the usual amounts of cats and dogs around here, but people also love their massive birds, their micro pigs and - naturally - reptiles.

Perhaps you still remember those guys:

Bearded dragons are quite possibly the most idiot-friendly kind of reptile. And maybe leopard geckos, but I just can't get myself to enjoy a tiny, fragile little animal, that drops its tail the moment I look at it funny. Our beardies are so unbelievably relaxed and easy to handle, it's hard to tell whether they're friendly and social or just incredibly slow.

I can put some salad in the food bowl and watch the tragedy unfold: Bakara, our special needs beardie, will attempt to catch the salad with her tongue, while she's about three feet away from it. Maybe she thinks she's a chameleon or something. So she licks the air for ten minutes, realizes she's too far away from the salad and moves one step closer. Rinse and repeat for two hours until she falls asleep or actually gets close enough to eat. Sometimes Chompy, the other dragon, watches the whole thing, then just takes the salad for herself. She doesn't even like salad. I suspect she's really just a total asshole.

That's all they ever do. They sit around and try to lick things. They sleep. They roast under the heater. You can pick them up and carry them around. They don't give a shit. You can watch TV with them and they'll go to sleep on you. You can put them on the scratchpost with the cats and they'll all stare out the window together.
I never expected any of them to twirl a stick, put on a little top hat and do a little happy dance. But when you watch beardie babies, they're curious, they're hyperactive, they pace up and down the tank, get on their hind legs and look at what's going on outside, they seem incredibly fun and clever and entertaining. And then they grow up and spend the rest of their lives just sitting there. My cat sleeps 18 hours a day. And compared to our beardies, that's still pretty damn active.

Don't get me wrong. I still like them. They're still fun to watch when they chase after bugs or swim around in the tub. And shopping is so much more fun when you have a lazy lizard sleeping on your shoulder! We even bring the lizards when we see the family. Because they're fun.
When we got our first beardie, I knew abolutely nothing about reptiles. Didn't know how to handle them, how to "read" them, the whole thing. Today I pick up our royal python to put her on youtube, I don't mind hand-feeding our lizards and I like doing a bit of research when I find the time. I have also learned that vast amounts of information on how to handle reptiles consists of hearsay, opinions and a lot of bullshit rather than facts. Which makes sense: We've had cats and dogs since the stone age. Reptiles? Not so much. I've read guides, which say that bosc monitors love eggs and should be fed lots of them. Yet another website suggests that eggs are bad and if you feed them eggs, the lizard will die a slow, horrible death before they even reach their first birthday. Yes, they used the word horrible. Death by egg.

Ahem. Anyhow. I'm not trying to sound like some fucking expert. Because I'm not. But I went from having zero clue about the whole thing to knowing how to handle tiny, unimpressive stuff like bearded dragons and ball pythons. They're not dangerous. They're not tricky in any way. But when you don't know shit about reptiles, why not start with something that won't put up a fight if you turn out to be too stupid to handle it, right?
I have learned a few basics, I'm actually enjoying the whole thing and I feel ready for an 'intermediate' reptile, so to speak.

The whole thing started with Hector. Hector is some guy's Asian monitor lizard and was on tv last year. Basically, that thing lives in his house and walks around there like some kind of watchdog, jumps in the bath tub when he feels like it, demands bacon and eggs for breakfast and is just a really fun pet. This may sound ridiculous, but for the most part, he functions like any cat or dog, minus the hair, the barking, flea infestations and ridiculous hormone-induced yowling sessions. I'd love to link a clip or two, but with Channel 5 being a bitch about their copyright crap, you can't even get a working video on their catchup-website. Just imagine some old guy living with a small dinosaur.

Then, just a few weeks ago, this guy came to the reptile shop, carrying a massive bosc (or 'savannah') monitor. Really cool kid with a really cool lizard. He was about the size of that guy here:

That thing was so chilled out and relaxed, it may as well have been dead. I picked him up and he just sat there, not giving a fuck about anything in the world. That guy put his finger in the lizard's mouth, something you should never do, because they have nasty, serrated teeth and they're incredibly strong and can do some serious damage to you. He didn't care. He put up with it. I have seen friendly juvenile monitors at the shop before, I have seen grownup "tame" boscs on youtube, but this lizard was like a different species or something. The guy has spent several hours each day, over the course of eight months, taming that lizard, bit by bit, until he could just carry him around town. No leash, no harness, no nothing, just like that.

And all of a sudden, my bearded dragons seemed incredibly shit in comparison. Again, I'm not setting them loose in some random field, I'm not trading them in, they're still very happy and well looked-after. But come on! Look at how massive he is! Fuck cats! Fuck dogs! Everybody has got one of those, anyway!
And then they had baby bosc monitors at the shop. Baby boscs look like this:

Well, you already know where I'm going with this. The one at the shop has not sold for a while, we're in the fortunate position of getting a little extra money right now and they're doing payment plans at the shop, so...

I had my first handling session today. I've never done anything quite like this, I had no idea what to expect and I'll admit to being a complete pussy and putting on a safety glove when I first tried to touch him. I had no clue how he would react or what he would do and I don't know what it feels like to be bitten by a lizard. I used to be scared when my cat would bite me as a kid, nowadays I don't even pull my hand away, because I'm so used to it and it doesn't really hurt all that much. Little Bosc? No clue. And yes, he's bigger than the tiny guy on the picture. :P

And holy fuck - that little bastard started to jump and hiss and tail whip like a pro! It took him a full five minutes just to stop freaking the fuck out whenever my hand got anywhere near him. But eventually, I managed to pick him up, then he'd let me touch him without spazzing out and eventually, I just held him and stroked him entirely without the glove.
I'm gonna have to repeat this little game every day now. Pick him up, no matter how much he hisses and struggles. Show him that it doesn't hurt to be picked up. And that there's no point in freaking out over it. I'm hoping that after some time he'll figure out that attacking me is useless, because it doesn't yield the desired effect. I'll still pick him up anyway, so he might as well stop struggling and put up with it. If they manage to intimidate you, then that's just what they'll do - hiss and bite and be a dick until you leave them alone. But that's not gonna work on me. I'll show him who's boss.

Anyhow. The plan is to turn him into a nice, tame lizard that is fun to handle when he's all grown up. He should be free to walk around the house just like the cats and I'd like to bring him along when I come to the shop or visit the family. I'm aware that I'll collect a few scars in the process, but if I wanted another easy reptile, I'd just go for my third beardie. I fully expect him to attack me again when I try picking him up tomorrow and he'll probably keep doing so for a while. Having absolutely no experience with this, I cannot really judge how long it's gonna take until he'll be fully okay with it. I just gotta pick him up every day. Until he gets bored of attacking me. Or better yet - until he learns that nobody is gonna hurt him.
Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be able to stick my finger up his mouth like that guy at the shop did. Yeah, probably not. I'm not sure I'd even want to risk that. I like my fingers.

-Cat