Bearded Dragons and the like

For a family with four boys, we arrived at the reptile stage fairly late in the game. I believe I may have grunted approval on the idea of a "bearded dragon" when Mary ran it by me between phone calls and that one act of absent-minded assent led to first one glass aquarium, with a two-light set, (one for day, one for night), along with two hollowed pine logs to shelter the dragons, since there had to be one lizard for Lockton and another for Samuel. Naturally, the red light broke after one day, and it soon became apparent that the two reptiles weren't acting like friendly side-kicks in a Pixar animation. They were acting like reptiles, with one of them looking like he wanted to eat the other. We added an aquarium divider, but that meant too little room for them, so off we went to buy another aquarium and another set of lights and more mealy worms.

"We need more crickets too," Mary said.
"Crickets?"
"They eat crickets. We need to get new crickets every month."

The idea of adding a cricket-run to our routine every two weeks suddenly brought things into that really sharp focus you experience when you get a new pair of glasses.

"We're not doing that," I said. "We need an online cricket source."
"I've tried."
"Try harder. We're not running down to San Bernardino to buy crickets. I'm not going to do that. You're not going to do that. Nobody is going to do that."

So we did eventually find a place that will ship crickets, but you need to be careful about size, since if the cricket is larger than the space between the dragon's eyes, it will just be an uneasy standoff between dragon and cricket -- and the dragon could could actually die if he manages to eat the jumbo Jiminy, by dint of something called 'back leg paralysis.'

The world, I conclude, is a richly complex and detailed place, but in the matter of pets, I strongly urge families to at least consider staying within the same taxonomic class and consider the merits of a friendly, hand-licking mammal whose food doesn't need to be measured, covered in calcium powder, or even kept alive for that matter. A Cocker Spaniel needs no special red light to go sleep, and it could wander just about anywhere in the house, or show up completely by surprise, without setting off a human fire alarm--a sopranic wail of discovery in the far corners of the house.

You can't say that about a bearded dragon .