by Sarah Armor

Created on: December 15, 2006   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Okay, so you like your pets cute and scaly... or just scaly. Well, I've tried a few reptile pets, and I must say that they all have merits. Snakes are just cool - they wrap around your arms, and they're fun to hold. Anoles are small, fast, and when they run, they curve their tails upward in an arc, which is funny to watch. Frogs don't really count as reptiles, but they do make cool noises, and some people like holding them, because they're so squishy.

But you can't have them all, so you need to choose. Unless you own a zoo, of course, in which case you can house more than enough pets to satisfy your average lizard-lover.

Snakes are among the coolest pets you could possibly get, and they're even... debatably... affectionate! They're also fairly low-mantainance, compared to dogs and the like. There's no fur to brush, and you don't even have to feed them every day, which is also a plus. But then we get to the bump in the road - feeding. Most snakes aren't like the mostly-vegetarian iguanas, or insectivore anoles. They eat baby mice, and like any pet lover, I find that deeply disturbing. There's just something wrong about killing a baby of any species. On the other hand, you can buy frozen baby mice, which isn't quite as bad.

They also get to be very large, in many cases, and people have a nasty habit of underestimating their ability to care for a large snake. As a result, people just set them loose outside, and they unwittingly wreak havoc upon the local ecosystem. This problem also occurs with Chinese Water Dragons, Iguanas, and the like.

Anoles are fun, too. They don't grow to be much bigger than your hand, so it's easy to keep them housed. Their antics are truly amusing, and while their food is kind of gross-looking... pet stores sell dead fruitflies in cans... they're much less traumatic than snakes. They can really be beautiful (I'm referring to green anoles, of course. The brown ones are often just ugly) and green anoles have a sort of grace when they walk, which is a striking similarity to chameleons.

Unfortunately, it is all too easy to lose an anole, because they're so small, and I can promise you now that if it gets outside, it's gone forever. These little guys can melt into the tiniest of holes, blend in with the scenery around them, and run really, really fast. They don't tame well, either. Fortunately, anole-teeth - they do have teeth - are so small that their bite barely hurts at all. As an additional warning, it's hard to tell when they're not eating.

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