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| Name: |
Sage
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Age: |
Six and a half months old
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| Gender: |
Female
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Kind: |
Bearded Dragon
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| Home: |
North Carolina, USA
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Meet
Sage, the Bearded Dragon (her coloring is called Sandfire)! If you've
never heard of a Bearded Dragon before, you're probably thinking that this
lizard looks very scary, aggressive, and perhaps even poisonous. But they are
the complete opposite of that, which is why they make such wonderful pets.
Sage is very sweet, never aggressive, loyal, tolerant, enjoys being petted
down the back and scratched on the head, and above all, full of personality.
So what made me want to buy her four months ago? Well, I work at PetSmart, and I
spend a lot of time taking care of the animals there. It was only a matter of
time until I fell in love with the bearded dragons, and just had to have one.
But like any responsible pet owner, the first thing I did was read all about
them, and thoroughly research every bit of information I could gather. It
turned out they were very easy to take care of. They naturally prefer a
desert-like habitat, and eat both insects and vegetables (as well as fruit).
Anyway, at the time, I already had a pet Chameleon, so I couldn't afford to
get a Bearded Dragon, nor did I have the room for a second reptile. So I
convinced my sister to buy one, and offered to chip in some of the cost. At
first we didn't know what gender she was, so we named her Ragnarok. But after
doing some more research and figuring out how to tell the gender, we realized
she was a female and renamed her as Sage.
We both loved her to death, but after a while, my sister decided to give her
away since it was hard to have a pet cat and a pet lizard at the same time.
But there was no way I could just let her go like that, so I made the
difficult choice to rehome my Chameleon so that I could keep the Bearded
Dragon. Well, I don't regret that one bit, because Sage is the best pet I've
ever had. I love carrying her around everywhere I go. She likes to just sit
on my shoulder or my chest, and I'll even take her out to PetSmart like that.
She never tries to run away. A lot of Bearded Dragons also enjoy swimming,
though mine doesn't care much for it, but whenever I put her in the tub for a
bath (It helps with shedding), she likes to drink the water. Here is a cute
video I recorded of her taking a bath.
She also likes to lick everything, which I personally find to be adorable.
Most all Bearded Dragons are like that. They licks their surroundings as sort
of a way of smelling it and analyzing it. Another thing I love about Sage, is
how tolerant she is. She lets me do anything with her, such as dressing her
up for Halloween and putting a Santa hat on her for Christmas.
I feed Sage a 50/50 diet of insects and veggies for optimal health. Right now
I am feeding her crickets for the insect portion, but by next month I will be
switching her to silkworms since they are the healthiest insect for reptiles,
and I have been breeding silkworms since November. As for veggies, I feed her
collard greens since they are one of the healthiest for a staple diet, and
are a common favorite among Bearded Dragons. Collard greens are Sage's
favorite, but she also likes green beans. Other common favorites are mustard
greens, dandelion greens, kale, and squash. A Bearded Dragon should never be
fed spinach though, because it contains oxalates which blocks their body from
absorbing calcium. They should never be fed lettuce either, because it has no
nutrition. It's basically crunchy water.
Anyway, Sage has grown a lot since the past four months that I have had her.
At first she was about the size of an apple slice, and now she is the size of
my hand and is over a foot long. I hold Sage for at least fifteen minutes a day,
so that she will continue to grow up as a very friendly lizard. You never
even have to worry about them biting you, because it's very rare for them to
do that, even if they are upset. They truly do make amazing pets as long as
they are raised well.
View more images of Sage!
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Talk about Sage in Pet Talk!
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