The real version :-)

Liam has been saving for 2 years to get these bearded dragons and at last the time has arrived. So off we go to the breeder to get the information and a quick look at the eggs. While the kids are happily patting and holding the bearded dragons I am interogating the poor breeder. An hour and a half later I come out with 3 pages of notes (that go both horizontally and vertically all over the pages) and a list of essentials a mile long. Overall it had been an amazing visit but we needed a tank, spotlight & UV bulb (connected of course), log and rock (sterilised of course), temp reader, calcium supplement, water sprayer etc. Not to mention Crickets and mealworms and homes for the crickets and mealworms AARRGGHH!!!!!!

Anyway a couple of weeks pass and we are mainly set up (minus the water sprayer that had broken from overuse in the week we had had it) only to find out that our tank is too big for hatchlings. So after an impulse buy on eBay (the night before we are to pick up the dragons), we do a rush trip to Richlands in Christmas traffic. With all the twisting and turning Kate gets carsick :-( I am in the middle of two solid lines of traffic on Milton Road and we have no bowl in the car, so frantically grabbing the rags we had packed to protect the tank, we bundle them up and they absorb the worst of it. We arrive get the tank and head home. Of Course Kate get's sick again (more rags) and about 2 hours after we set out we have a small tank and a pile of smelly rags. Home again I set Liam to clean the tank while I deal with the rags and then I go to check on the light and heating system my dad rigged up for us and low and behold it doesn't fit!!!!!

Nontheless thinking that it will all somehow work out we head off to pick up the dragons. Liam had a ball and we arrived home with even more instructions. "Don't feed them too big a crickets as they can choke and check that they are feeding properly!" No problem, I think to myself, we got small crickets and have read everything we can get our hands on, this will be fine. So we come home put them in their new small tank, lie the light system over it sideways with some of both lights over the tank and think way to go, we made it. I knew we would have to change the lights, but figured, hey, these creatures survive in the wild they will survive a couple of days in less than ideal environment, right? WRONG!!!!!

This morning Liam gets up and feeds them some more crickets. he comments that the one we call a girl (you can't tell at this age) doesn't like crickets, she just isn't interested. I find this a little worrying so start to check on her. In my observations of her I realise that even though the lights were over the cage no heat was going into the cage. By this time she is looking really listless and pale and I am starting to stress. So with a lot of running about and balancing stools, boxes and pieces of wood we rigged up a system allowing the heat light to point directly down onto the rock in the cage. We put them in the heat and watch anxiously. After about 5 mins of stillness the pale dragon jumped up on the log, twitched violently and regurgitated a cricket. (YUCK!!) It seems that dragons need heat to digest their food, both underbelly and above so with the lack of heat, she was in real trouble. After that she seemed a little better but still off her food (Stress, Stress). I suddenly realise that now that the heat was working we should check out the temp to check it isn't too hot (a dragon cage has to been quite hot one end, and cooler the other so they can regulate their temperature). So I go get the new fangled temperature reader we bought, eventually work out how it works and put it in the tank. A quick check ten minutes later and aarrgghh!!! It is TOO HOT!!!! so we move the heat light away from the rock and check it again in half an hour....now it is TOO COLD!!!! so we procede on an hour of moving the light in 2 cm increments until at last it is the right temp. PHEW!!! By this time our girl has darkened up in colour and was a lot more alert (much to my relief) and so ends day one in the life and times of our bearded dragons.