Exotic pet folks, this thread is for you. Pics of my kid's firebelly toad

[Maddy McCall]

and his iguana. I was fooling around with my Canon G2 and made these awhile ago. Plus, I've had a few beers and felt like showing off these guys.

The firebellies can't be handled. They have a toxic secretion that irritates skin. They live in a ten-gallon half-stone, half-aquatic tank and eat crickets.

The iguana can be handled, but watch out for that whip of a tail. He also lives in a ten-gallon tank, with bark for the substrate, and he eats fresh veggies. He's a baby--he will outgrow his tank in a year or so.

I want a bearded lizard SO BAD. However, there is a mental illness called "pet hoarding," and I am afraid that I could succumb to it.

I have also read about people who have free-roaming geckos in their homes to control insect pests. Sounds like a neat way to avoid pesticide use.

Do you have an exotic pet? Do you handle it? What do you feed it? Is it difficult to care for? Post a photo if you have one.

Here are mine:

[ET Awful]

1. Very nice. The Canon does an excellent job of color reproduction.

My Minolta A1 does pretty well, but I usually get a little more noise in the photo.

Nice photos :)

[Maddy McCall]

2. Thanks! Actually, I think it is prone to too much red...

Do you see that?

I took both photos in macro mode, though, and it usually does a pretty nice job.

[ET Awful]

13. I can't say for sure since I haven't seen the actual subjects of the photo

but it's very vivid, so that's a possibility.

[wryter2000]

3. What gorgeous animals!

I have two snakes. Herps are such fabulous pets.

[Maddy McCall]

4. What kind of snakes?

Thanks for the compliments. :-)

[Chovexani]

5. Cool

I love iguanas but I don't think I could ever have one. My best friend has one and one time when we were bored we took him out of the tank and had him storm a Lego jungle we built...like Jurassic Park. :P Wish I could find the pictures, they were pretty funny.

[Maddy McCall]

6. He's shedding right now.

The little guy is growing so fast, he has outgrown his skin.

I hope you can find the Lego photos. Would love to see that! :-)

[Jokinomx]

7. Let me guess... the toad is Cheney... and the lizard is Chimp?

Great pics BTW...:-)

[Maddy McCall]

9. LOL! Nope, the kiddo named the toad "Squeegy" and the ig "Sid"

[Chovexani]

8. My friend's iguana is a monster

He's freakin' huge. I can remember when she first got him, and he was small enough to keep in one hand. :)

Those toads are really cute. How do you handle them for care & feeding, etc? Exotic animal friends are so fascinating.

[Maddy McCall]

11. Boyfriend from years ago had a monster of an iquana...

It was sooo cool. I don't know what ever happened to it.

The toads: I don't have to handle them--I just put crickets in the tank and they gobble them up. When I have to clean the tank (haven't done this yet) I will use a net and place them in a bucket. I have touched them, but I washed my hands immediately.

In the aquarium end of the tank are rosie reds (small feeder fish). It's cool to wake up in the morning and see that there are two less than the night before.

[Magrittes Pipe]

10. Lick it.

You know you're dying to find out.

[Maddy McCall]

12. LOL! Believe me, I was COMPLETELY joking about that...

If anyone were stupid enough to lick a firebelly, they would set their tongue on fire. Still, there was a warning on the container in which the toads came. :-) So, evidently, someone has been dumb enough.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

14. We have a leopard gecko named Spotty

whom I have come to peace with (hated it at first). We have a beta, too, named Samantha (I LOVE the fish....I talk to her all the time).

We did have two fire-bellied toads, but they met early and strange demises.

Little Moonbeam wants to be a herpatologist, among other things, and adores cold-blooded creatures. Much to her mother's dismay.

In our freezer, there are ziplock baggies with different insect specimens. Ug. We've learned to not look at them. The pesticide guy told her to do that to keep the specimens fresh.

She said the other day, "When spotty dies, (the gecko) can we dissect him?"

[Maddy McCall]

15. Sounds like you have a smart kid...

She sounds very inquisitive...you possibly have a future zoologist. :-)

Tell me more about preserving animal specimens. I find odd bugs all the time where I live (in the country) and would love to preserve them for my kid's science class bug collection that is coming up this year.

[Maddy McCall]

17. More questions...

What were your fire bellies symptoms before they died (so I know what to watch for)?

And how is it having a gecko for a pet? What do you feed it? Is it aggressive? Where do you keep it? I want a tokay gecko, but the petstore guy told me that they are VERY aggressive and not good if you have kids.

Here is a tokay:

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

21. Ok

the bug specimens, real simple: put them in a ziplock baggie as whole as you can keep them, press all air out (better to almost close the baggie, leaving a drinking straw sticking out, then suck all the air out but with a dead bug in there, no thanks). Close it and get it in freezer as quickly as possible. Put in an area where they won't get crushed, maybe a box just for the specimens. One bag per.

The leopard gecko is great, very tame. Eats two live mealworms off a spoon every other day. Fresh water. Easy. Problem is I heard they can live to 20-22 years old. Shnikies! If this thing is still alive when she goes to college, she's taking him with her.

Every now and then we kind of scoop out his cage using a little kitty litter scoop. Has a heating pad on one side of the tank at all times. Loves places to hide. Sheds its skin every now and then.

I was told one of the best lizards to start with is an Australian bearded dragon. Not as scary as it sounds at all. Very tame, easily trained, doesn't dart like some geckos do, doesn't use its tail to whip you like some lizards do, nice and gentle! But it is about $70 and we were given the gecko (free, tank and all) already tamed so we went with it.

Australian bearded dragons are also really cute. Cuter than geckos in my opinion.

Hope that helped!

Oh I almost forgot: the fire-bellied toads--sorry but we have no idea what happened! We did everything just the way we were told at the pet store, even read some stuff online to make sure. They both sort of wasted away. They were eating, drinking, seemed fine, then got more and more lethargic and died.

It was very sad.

[Misunderestimator]

16. Great pics... and love your new avatar... it IS new isn't it?

[Maddy McCall]

18. Yes. That is a pic of Sid the day we got him.

Thanks for the compliments!

Hey, why aren't you in LA this weekend?? :-)

[Misunderestimator]

19. Because NEXT weekend...

I will have a visitor. :)

[Maddy McCall]

20. Oooooh!

That's great!

:-)