In case you didn’t know, the wild green anoles normally won’t let you pick them up in this fashion.
I actually have had several of these as pets. The first pair was ordered from an ad in Field and Stream, and the other pair was caught in North Carolina. They don’t actually live all that long in captivity, and they really shouldn’t be handled.
My favorite thing to do with them was to feed them flies that I caught and crickets that I bought. I would put these things loose in their enclosure, and the anoles would stalk them in a very cat-like fashion.
These anoles wouldn’t drink water from a bowl. I had to spray the inside of their tanks with a mister, and they lap up the droplets with their tongues. In the wild, they drink the dew that forms on plants in the morning.
They are not native to West Virginia– at all. Their range is in the subtropical South from southeast Virginia all the way to Texas. I have encountered them in the wild in Eastern North Carolina. They used to frequent the boardwalk where we used to go to the beach, and when the sprinklers would go off at the condos, they would show up to drink the water drops.
I don’t think I would ever keep these animals again. Although they can be bred in captivity, most of the ones available in pet stores are still wild caught. The stress of being captured and then transported away really is hard on them. The female in my first pair had a missing leg. I wonder how she lost that leg, but I now think that the possibility exists that she lost that leg as she was captured.
They really shouldn’t be handled all that much, but the male from my first pair (named Gonzales) was pretty docile. I think he was the exception to the rule, and it may have been more symptomatic of an underlying health condition. Wild anoles really shouldn’t let people pick them up.
If I were to get another pet lizard, I think I would go for a bearded dragon, but a friend of mine had one that died after just a few months. He was feeding his dragon a diet that was carefully supplemented with calcium, but one day, the lizard started having seizures– a sign of calcium issues. He died within 24 hours.
Bearded dragons are supposed to be the easiest lizards to care for, and yet this particular lizard died even though he was receiving competent care (my friend’s wife is a biologist who was working for a children’s museum that kept several species of lizard).
This should tell anyone that keeping lizards in captivity is a risky endeavor. Even with species that do well in captivity, there are some individuals who fail to thrive.
some species are easier than others –
but U are right that *all!* herps have strict needs for husbandry; humidity, temp, a temp-gradient, light, diet, supplements in many cases, etc.
chameleons are probably the most-delicate of lizards;
tegus are among the easiest, and if handled gently + competently, can become very friendly.
some species once adult/post-puberty are NEVER likely to be handleable; many monitor-species are in that group, they typically deliver wicked bites.
there was a large tank in the Bio-lab of our high-school, and a parent who had a Spectacled Caiman no longer wanted the animal; he donated it with strict instructions *not!* to touch him, as he bit.
one end of the tank was water for the already long-term residents, 3 snappers + a soft-shell; the other was gravel with a hide-box, and basking light.
my job was feeding + cleaning every-other day; within a week, the Caiman was approaching to be fed, and seemed very calm for a supposedly aggro-animal.
to clean the tank properly, i had to move him – the turtles would just retreat to the water, but the Caiman had to be shifted around. so i moved him by gently prodding him with the cleaning-brush, then began directing him by moving the brush AT him, instead; he was quite co-operative.
he was NOT aggro, it turned out good-ol-dad was semi-starving him to slow his growth. ::mad::
THATS why he went for food in a ferocious lunge.
i liked his temperament, tho i never actually handled him – or the snappers or soft-shell. and i would never want any of the 3 as pets!
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
People do something worse for fish.
Put them in a small tank, and they won’t grow very big.
That’s what the urban legend says.
And the results are pretty bad.
Yeah, anoles really aren’t good pets. They’re fragile, skittish and fast movers and escape artists. Most reptiles really aren’t good pets. Bearded dragons are an exception to this rule, IMO.
That’s sad about your friend’s dragon. In my experience, they’re pretty hardy and long-lived. I’ve seen rescue cases that survived years without ANY calcium supplement or proper lighting.
Iquanas and bearded dragons are the only reptiles I’ve met that actually seem capable of not just tolerating humans, but actually almost showing affection. The place I interned at had more than one iguana that sought attention and showed every sign of enjoying being petted.
Crested Geckos are actually the easiest to keep, requiring no special housing, no special lighting, no special heating and do fine on a well supplemented diet of either specialty crested gecko food mixed with water or baby food, and tiny crickets once a week.
Beardies are actually one of the most expensive herps to keep, requiring heat, light, and immense amounts of crickets while growing. These guys can eat 100-150 crickets a DAY. It cost me more to feed my beardie than it did to feed three medium sized dogs Orijen.
However, in temperament Beardies are most dog-like of all herps. Cresties can grow to tolerate handling quite well, but they do jump and you need to be careful. I’ve found mature cresties to be extremely docile and easy to handle provided they were handled gently as juveniles.
>> Beardies are actually one of the most expensive herps to keep, requiring heat, light, and immense amounts of crickets while growing. These guys can eat 100-150 crickets a DAY. It cost me more to feed my beardie than it did to feed three medium sized dogs Orijen. <<
i wonder –
there are now extremely good *insectivorous* diets for birds, and why would that Not-Work for Beardies as a juvie-diet?
many birds that will eat seed or fruit as adults are primarily insectivorous as nestlings + fledglings – and they do nicely on this commercial-insectivore diet.
BESIDES many commercial-crickets, once in *pet stores*, are Not Fed!! – and become empty shells, mostly wasted husk with little protein + poor digestibility. ::mad::
it pi**es me off, as feeding crickets is neither expensive nor complex; i used to buy my crickets a WEEK before i expected to feed them, so that i cold beef-up the crickets!!
which seems really dumb, but is often absolutely imperative, or they are the equivalent of feeding the candy-wrapper of plastic + pasteboard, not the candy-bar.
:: no-nod ::
how about waxworms, and other Soft-Bodied high-protein insects, vs crickets? as an alternate to hard-shell + low-content pet-shop crickets?
just wondering,
— terry
I actually had a lot of anoles as a kid, as I was continually taking them away from neighborhood cats, keeping them till they healed up (I suspect, in retrospect, that neosporin is probably not good for lizards, but I also don’t think it was worse than doing nothing at all) and releasing them in our backyard. I’m not sure if Mom ever realized that it was not the same three anoles living for 6+ years.
And now I hope Mom never finds this blog. :D
we had a mouse-problem one fall that lasted clear into
spring – and i always caught a couple of snakes to keep for the summer, then release.
that particular summer, after the heavy mouse-boom,
i caught an unusually docile blacksnake, AKA black rat-snake, and did NOT release her come late-summer where i had found her, well-fed + healthy, to find her hibernaculum, but i brought her into our (then) dirt-floored, stone-walled farmhouse cellar, and turned her loose. ;)
we didn;t have a mouse-problem that winter, LOL –
but one day early in May when the coal-furnace was long cold, my mother found a SNAKE lying on top of it, and screamed at the top of her lungs, :-))
i carefully caught her and took her outside, returning her at long last to the point where i had caught her over a year before…
with my sincere thanks.
my mother will never see this blog –
she died in 2009 – but i never confessed to providing live-in rodent control in her lifetime; so Peg, here it is:
yes, i DID know that snake, and she knew me –
and yup, i brought her in, and i;m not sorry, except for scaring U – i tried to find her before that, and never succeeded. :-(
sorry for the fright – but U hated the mouse-invasions, too.
the snake was IMO the lesser evil. ;-)
— terry
if any one knows any petshops in west virginia that sells them, post it here!
I don’t know of any.
The Petland at the Grand Central Mall in Vienna used to sell them.
But there is no Petland there anymore.
You could always go to the beach and catch some…