Bearded Dragon

This is the story of Fiona, our most beloved bearded dragon pet we had in California. This species is native of the deserts of Australia, but it’s also easy to breed in captivity and to look after as pet. Thus, bearded dragons of amazing patterns and colors are very popular as pets in the US. We named our girl Fiona because she had that oxymoronic quality of having a unique monstrous look that reptile lovers fall in love with, something reminding us of Shrek’s Princess Fiona. So, our Fiona was big, beautiful (how many times did I say this?), and friendly. She ate worms and crickets hand-fed by Tiziano and Chloe. She had a wonderful personality, showing excitement when Tiziano shook the Ziploc bag with vitamin-powdered crickets in front of her, and demonstrating irritation (a bit of a black beard, even though males do that better in this species) at some unknown factor. Sadly, we sold Fiona when we moved to Australia, despite the fact that she should have been given full rights to repatriation. The problem was that if we wanted to bring her along, she had to stay in extended and costly quarantine. We missed Fiona for a very long time, until we met her relatives in the wild in the desert surrounding Alice Springs. They basked on the side of the road (look at the picture) or recklessly in the middle of the road, even bobbing their heads when a car approached. I guess beauty does not associate with awareness of enemy’s size in this species… We were so thrilled to see the bearded dragons in the wild, almost kidnapped one to bring home! Almost. We never thought serious about this because it is wrong to do it and to keep such a pet, we’d need to get a license in this country. If you guessed that we can’t wait to go back to the desert just to see more “Fiona”s, you are right!