My reptile hobby is generally a quiet and enjoyable one. On occasion, though, one of my pets may be in a foul mood. A few weeks ago I was been bitten by Mulder, one of the Costa Rican boas and today by Morpheus, one of the bearded dragons. Neither was incredibly deep, but the one from the dragon throbbed most of the day. He managed to get me on both sides of my finger - on one side with his upper jaw and the other side with his lower. To have such tiny teeth, he sure has a strong bite.

This was the bite from Mulder. It was feeding day and I was taking him out of his cage. His tail was wrapped around a branch. I slowly started to unwrap his tail and gently shook the branch. I don’t know if maybe I still had the smell of mice on my hand or if he just wasn’t happy about the shaking. Either way, he lashed out and bit me on the index finger of my left hand. You can see the two marks left by his small teeth (or fangs I guess you could call them).

Here is today’s bite from Morpheus. He isn’t a friendly dragon at all - never has been. When we first brought him home and had him in a cage with another dragon (a female), he bit her on the tail. That bought him his own cage with no roommates. I’ve tried to handle him a few times, but he just never became a nice guy. Each week when it’s bath time he and I have a power struggle. I use a towel to wrap around him and carry him to the tub. The towel protects me from his “spikes”. They aren’t sharp enough to poke through my skin, but they can get pretty hard when he blows up like a puffer fish. Today when I picked him up, he managed to spin just right to get a good hold on my finger. The same index finger Mulder bit a few weeks ago. The picture here was after a peroxide cleaning and holding a gauze wrap around it for several minutes to stop the bleeding. The other side was a small hole that should heal very quickly. Because it is on both sides, I can’t use a regular band-aid. So, tonight it is wrapped in gauze with tape around it to hold it on. That leaves me typing with only 9 fingers. Something that takes some getting used to.

Despite these few incidents I adore my critters. I am working on getting a photo page (or several) together to post here on the blog. It will be nice to have a place to post pictures of the pets.

Tags: Pets