Mommy Mondays: First Pets

Well, we've got a new family member. Let me introduce you to

Thatlizard

Thatlizard is a Nigerian Uromastyx, and she is Thatkid's first official pet.  So I thought this might be a good time to talk about kids and pets.

You see, I'm of the opinion that children learn valuable life skills by having a pet in the house. Responsibility, learning to think about someone other than yourself, caring for something dependent on you - all are important parts of pet ownership. But these are all things that they can easily learn with a family pet. I'm very hesitant about children having pets of their own.

To begin with, there's a fairly steep learning curve in the responsibility department. Kids are, by their very nature, irresponsible. And a living creature ends up paying for it. Which means, despite the fact that it's the child's pet, it quickly becomes the parent's responsibility. Either through constant nagging, or because they end up just taking over.

Secondly, most pets are not easy. Their environment needs maintaining, they need to be fed, exercised, and cleaned up after. Failure to do so, and you end up with a sick pet. That's a lot to ask  of a child.


And yet, here we are, with a sweet new lizard living in our home. Thatkid first asked for a pet sometime last year. We talked a little bit about how he would have to show a lot more responsibility. We told him to take care of Thatdog for a couple weeks and we'd talk.

And he did. Then he came back to us, asking for a lizard.  We told him that any pet that lived in his room would need a clean environment, so he'd need to work on keeping his room cleaner.

And he did. Meanwhile, I started looking into lizards. I wasn't completely averse to the idea, as we'd had several species of lizards as pets when I was  growing up. The right lizard is easier to care for than most other pets. They don't need to be exercised like dogs, you don't need to worry about water pH and cleaning tanks like fish, and they're not as noisy as birds. And I'm prepared to take over responsibility, thinking of it as a family pet, despite calling it Thatkid's lizard.

My only qualm with lizards were their diet. No rodents and no crickets was my one requirement.

Someone told me they had a uromastyx once who only ate vegetables and followed her around like a dog. The followed around part I wasn't interested in, but I liked the idea of a vegetarian lizard, so I looked into it and decided this was the perfect first pet for Thatkid.

Uromastyx are diurnal desert dwellers. Which means her vivarium only needs to be lit during the day, and the biggest concern is making sure it's warm enough, also accomplished with the same lighting. Low humidity, basking spots of 120°, and some cool places to hide are easy enough to provide.

 UV lighting is important, so one of the lights is also a  UV light. Thatkid is responsible for turning the lights on every morning and off every night. But lightbulbs are no substitution for the real thing, so when it's warm enough, she gets to go outside.

Another bonus of the uromastyx is that they're not biters. I have heard that many dislike being handled and may whip with their tail, but that's a good reason to get a captive bred (cb) versus a wild caught (wc) uromastyx, which I've learned most hobbyist recommend anyway.

The cool thing about many uromastyx are their coloring. Males are much more colorful than females, so Thatlizard isn't quite as bright as her male counterparts, but when she warms up, she turns a beautiful yellow orange. When she's cold, her skin darkens to brown, to help her absorb more sun and heat.

As promised, Thatlizard is a vegetarian. She gets fresh greens each day, mostly spring greens, although we recently discovered she loves dandelion greens. She also loves lentils, honeysuckle and dandelion flowers. Which makes her very easy to feed and take care of.

Both boys love her and Thatkid is so proud of his little pet. I look forward to many many many years  with our new family member.