WOOHOO!

[luna]

a shopping trip is always good to forget about the depressing weather

[Nadia]

We've been having crazy heat every day and then about twice a week, intense rain storms during the night that flood everything and increase the humidity so the heat is less bearable during the day. My room mates and I have all been super lazy all week, laying around in tank tops and never exerting more energy than necessary. I never complain though because a hot summer in Ohio is a good thing, if you ask me. The last two summers seemed continuously drizzly, gray and cold, barely countering our death winters.

@Nadia: Fuck yeah, a job! Congrats to you on that and the snake. I love reptiles.

Thanks.
I love reptiles too. In addition to the snake, I have a painted turtle and my roommate has a chameleon. We're knocking out shelves on our entertainment center so we can have a place to put terrariums and aquariums. We'll have one empty space  left awkwardly on one of the shelves with just the three pets we have, so we're thinking of getting a fourth just because. He wants a fish, but I say we get a gecko. Geckos are cute and low maintenance. Plus, I've always had this anxiety about handling fish and I always worry that any second they're going to die. We'll see I guess.

 

[Aaron]

WOOHOO on pets!

I'm getting better at solving my 7x7. I no longer look like a dog that has been shown a card trick (Bill Hicks line). And so my 5x5 time has also improved. While I'm far from having the 7x7 mastered, I can't wait for Vcube to make an 11x11 (they have the plans, and what not. They are fans of old trank soon.) There is one on the market now, however, its 160USD, which is WAY to much for me to drop on a cube.

[individualzero]

I love turtles too (and chameleons are pretty up there -- they're SO COOL), though I don't think I have the money to spend on a decent cage and food and what not, so I just kind of go "cool, reptiles!" for the time being. When we move, I'm probably going to look into a chameleon or turtle though. My parents would freak if I bought a snake.




woohoo!: I bought an Intuos4 Small tablet from Wacom. We're about to go see the new Harry Potter, but after that I'm getting home and artsing my ass off. I can't wait to try it...

[Nadia]

I highly recommend the chameleon. Get a young one and get a male (females can be particular about bedding and if you don't get the kind she likes, you run the risk of her getting egg locked). Chameleons are a lot of fun and are really fun to watch eat. Turtles are also fun to watch eat if you feed them live crickets, fish etc but they are a little more maintenance. Changing bedding for a chameleon is easier than changing water for a turtle, and having to replace filter cartridges is added cost. Of course, if you don't get an aquatic turtle you don't have to worry about water and such, but I find that land turtle are boring. Chameleons are also more fun to handle. They climb and change colours and don't mind being held for long periods of time. Turtles are fun to handle for a little while, but become restless and want to go back into the water. Our chameleon, Charlie, doesn't mind leaving his terrarium for an hour or two. Sometimes he likes to just climb into my dreadlocks and take a nap. He's good company. Don't get me wrong, I adore my pet turtle and am glad to have him, but if you're choosing either or, I say go with the chameleon.

WOOHOO on pets!

I'm getting better at solving my 7x7. I no longer look like a dog that has been shown a card trick (Bill Hicks line). And so my 5x5 time has also improved. While I'm far from having the 7x7 mastered, I can't wait for Vcube to make an 11x11 (they have the plans, and what not. They are fans of old trank soon.) There is one on the market now, however, its 160USD, which is WAY to much for me to drop on a cube.

I admire people who can do Rubik's Cubes of any size. My roommate is super into them. He and a few of my friends have tried to teach me how, and insist that anyone can do it if they learn the algorithms but I get too frustrated.

[r00]

What kind of chameleon is your roomates?  Those things can be very hard to take care of depending on the species.  Some won't even drink unless you setup a constant drip system for them to simulate water dropping off leaves  I had a couple of senegal chameleons for a bit and ended up giving them to a serious breeder because I knew I couldn't take care of them properly.  One had stopped eating and was always stressed out, so I knew I needed to get them to someone that had the time and knowledge to give them a better home.

[Nadia]

We have a veiled chameleon. He's not very particular about his eating or drinking habits and hasn't shown any signs of stress so far, although we've only had him since March. We have a water drip system set up for him, but he does prefer to drink off of the leaves. We spray his terrarium every now and then. If his leaves aren't wet he drinks from the dripper. I don't know a lot about senegal chameleons, and only know of one other person who has a veiled chameleon, but he hasn't had any trouble with his either. Was yours a male or female?

[r00]

Glad to hear the veiled is doing well. 8)   I have heard that they are much easier to keep and breed in captivity and not as freaky about every little change to their environment.  I had 1 male and 1 female senegal.  You definitely dont want to have more than 1 male in the same habitat or one  will eventually die from either being beaten up or just stressed out 24/7. 

I haven't kept reptiles in a long time though.  I am sure a lot of the science and practices have improved, as well as progress in captive breeding and creating more "pet friendly" phenotypes that weren't around before.

[luna]

i'm happy that i found somewhere that sells cute yoga clothes and doesn't charge $30 to ship to canada

[individualzero]

Nadia, you seem to really like the veiled chameleon! Based on feedback from you and r00, it sounds like one such chameleon would be a good 'starter' lizard?

Also, is there an easier way to feed them than to just pick dead crickets out of a bucket? My nephew owned an iguana, and apparently chameleons live off a similar deit; I'm mildly misophobic, so touching dead things makes me a little ill. lol, it's not even the fact that they're bugs, just that they're dead. I'm weird, I know.

[Nadia]

We only feed our chameleon live crickets. Your local pet store will probably keep live crickets if it sells any reptiles at all. We buy them "gut loaded" meaning that they've been fed a special diet that will be beneficial to your chameleon. Additionally, we have a special dust that we shake around on the crickets that contains vitamins and whatnot. There is no need to touch the live crickets directly. They come in a sealed plastic bag with enough oxygen to last them an afternoon or so, then we dump them into our "cricket keeper" which is like a travel-sized, plastic terrarium with tubes in it. The crickets like to crawl into the tubes. Whenever we are ready to feed Charlie, we can just pull a tube from the cricket keeper and shake it into the terrarium. Charlie usually takes it from there. If he doesn't take notice to the crickets right away, we sometimes spray them with water so they'll hop around. When he sees the movement he goes for it (this is not important to do, but if you want to watch your chameleon eat, it pushes the process along faster and is fun to do).

[individualzero]

Awesome advice! Thanks a lot for the info.

[r00]

Also, is there an easier way to feed them than to just pick dead crickets out of a bucket? My nephew owned an iguana, and apparently chameleons live off a similar deit; I'm mildly misophobic, so touching dead things makes me a little ill. lol, it's not even the fact that they're bugs, just that they're dead. I'm weird, I know.

Iguanas are vegetarians.  The only time they eat insects (usually) are when they are young.  So if you don't like the thought of handling insects living or dead, iguana's arer the reptile pet for you.  ;-)

Nadia, one thing we used to do at the zoo to stimulate the panther chameleons to eat was take a white plastic bowl and put the crickets in it.  It made them more visible and kept them from running off and dieing somewhere else in the habitat.  To keep them from jumping out of the bowl, you just pinch off their pair of jumping legs before putting them in there (seriously, just pinch them and they fall off on their own).  They can't climb the slick plastic.

[Nadia]

The bowl sounds like a good idea. But we haven't really had a lot of problems with the crickets dying in the terrarium; Charlie usually gets them all. I don't know about pinching the crickets' legs. I know they're about to be eaten, but having your legs pinched off sounds like a horrible experience. I suppose it hardly matters, but I don't know if I could do it. I guess I'll see what my roommate thinks. Hmms.

[r00]

I understand the legs thing.  I won't tell you how we used to gut-load the pinky mice then.  haha