The Four Dragons

There are 4 Bearded Dragons here at the rescue. Elliot is a boy of a few years old now, who was supposedly just found in someone's backyard, in a bucket, so they told me. I don't believe that though. These were young college aged males who had aquariums set up for reptiles elsewhere in the house, and I suspect that he actually may have belonged to one of them, or a roommate they booted from the house, and they simply wanted to surrender him without paying the surrender fee. So they made up a story that they just found him in their backyard. I never believed that was the truth. He was just a baby of a few months old at the time, and he came home with me. I named him Elliot for no other reason than this was the name of the street where the house was where I picked him up. A short time later I took in an older female that I named Gracie, because her former owner had just been sent to prison. The family asked me to come take her. Her male companion had died not long before, for lack of the family knowing how to take care of them. Gracie was already more than 10 years old though at the time. She lived with us as Elliot's girl for about 3 years, before she died. Elliot was very heartbroken, and he watched intently as I tried to revive her, intubated her and gave her O2, etc. Elliot then refused to eat or bask for MONTHS afterward, and kept his nose in the corner most days. I know what brumation is. I know reptile husbandry and behaviors. I've been doing this a long, long time. These animals are much more complex than most people know. It was not environmental. Elliot most certainly was depressed after Gracie died. It took some time for him to bounce back, and I had to force feed him eventually. But then this little young female named Jake came into his world about a year later. Jake was named before her owners knew that she was a female. I often call her Jakey instead, and have considered changing her name. But her owner could no longer keeper her, so she was surrendered. And Elliot and Jakey hit it off well, and Elliot is back to his old happy self again.

Smaug is a big older male who also was surrendered a little while after Jakey came to us. His owners were moving to one of the Dakotas to chase the oil field work, and they didn't think they could drag him around and care for him well. It was the best thing for him. But Smaug has been alone for almost 2 years here. I felt bad for him because Elliot had a girl and Smaug did not, and Smaug was much less lively than Elliot, and he wasn't often eating. Until finally, we got in yet one more surrendered dragon this past Christmas. I haven't settled on a name, but I'm calling her Christmas for now. She had been a child's pet, and age-old story goes...child gets bored and doesn't spend time with pet. Mom brings pet down and drops it off at the pet store. She ended up making her way here, and now she's Smaug's girl for the past month, and he's a very happy boy now too. ^_^ Having a girl makes a difference in the life of a boy. You start to care more. And Smaug has visibly perked up and become interested in being active and eating now. He had been nothing but subdued his entire time here before, even when given nice new Powersun UVB lamps.

In general, it's not advised or safe to house Bearded Dragons together. They tend to be very territorial and will bite and even kill each other if you have a significant size differential, two males, two females where one is overly dominant, or just generally sometimes their personalities don't match. And I don't do reptile breeding here. Any reptile offspring that come from this rescue are only intended to be released to the wild. The reason I am housing 2 male-female pairs together is because males obviously are more accepting of sharing their homes with a female, and because the females did not go into the terrariums with the males right away. At first, the females were only brought in to visit, and resided in a separate adjacent tank, while I could monitor the disposition of the males. But in both cases, Elliot and Smaug were very accepting and excited about their girls and there have been no problems. Jakey produced a couple of clutches of eggs last year, but they weren't fertile. I separated them at times, so Elliot wouldn't mate with her, because we don't really need to produce dragons, as cute as they would be.