by Tinoy Mama

Created on: May 21, 2008   Last Updated: May 28, 2008

Ahhh, the pleasure of owning pets! For reasons that are just too complicated to discuss (mainly, I was out of my mind,) we ended up with two beautiful Bearded Dragons that, at least for a while, were a close part of our family. Our 5 year old son, Coby, enjoyed petting them, playing with them, and, of course, feeding them.

What, you may ask, do Bearded Dragons eat? Well, they eat chopped vegetables and fruit, meal worms, and (GULP) live crickets. How, you might enquire, does one get those lovely crickets and worms? No, hunting for them outdoors is not recommended.

So, on a sunny day when we were out of dragon food, Coby and I made the short trip to the exotic pet store, where they sold worms and crickets by the dozen. YUM! The worms are stored in sealed containers, and fed to the dragons with long tweezers. Kind of gross, but easy to get used to. The crickets, however, live in their own cricket house, complete with hollow tubes that one shakes into the dragon aquarium to rain crickets for the dragons to eat. The poor pet owner, however, is the one to get the crickets from the paper bag they come in, into their little cricket house.

Normally, (as I am deathly afraid of crickets) it was my husband's job to deal with all aspects of the crickets. But seeing as my poor Beardeds were starving, and my little boy was bored, I decided to make that fateful trip to the aforementioned pet store. Coby and I had a great time looking at all the animals, and finally, the time had come to purchase the crickets and bring them home.

Coby happily volunteered to carry the jumpy and wriggly (and carefully stapled shut) paper bag to the car, and to keep it safe until we got home. I was fairly confident in my ability to transfer those jumpy creatures safely from the bag to their little house. I decided to make a lesson out of it. I taught Coby about the crickets, what they eat, why they are eaten, and the circle of life.

When we got home, I got the cricket house ready for "the transfer." Unfortunately, my little angel of a boy decided he was going to be helpful by opening the bag for mommy. Immediate chaos followed. Twenty very large, very energetic crickets started jumping everywhere in my kitchen. There was running (by me) followed by more running (by Coby, chasing me, chasing the crickets.) There was screaming (again, by me), followed by (delighted) screaming and squealing by Coby.

Finally, I got twenty ceramic soup bowls (the only thing that came to mind in my time of panic) and carefully placed a bowl upside down on top of each cricket, thus trapping it in place until my husband got home to rescue us all. The two hours between the bowl-placing and the time my husband came home were spent playing "count the bowls" games, as well as "who can squeal loudest" games.

To this day, when anyone asks Coby what mommy does when she sees crickets, he'll do an Oscar-worthy imitation of me screaming and running around like mad.

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