It used to be the iguana. Then it was the boa. Then ball pythons took center stage. Now it is the bearded dragon.

The choice for most popular reptile pet waxes and wanes with tastes, styles, supply, and information. It turns out bearded dragons are at the top of the heap just now. They have personality, are easy to care for, have a reasonable life span, grow to a moderate size, and have an interesting biology.

If you plan to incorporate a bearded dragon into your family, here are the basics. Acquire a dragon that is bigger than your thumb from the tip to the very bottom of your second knuckle.  Beardies that are smaller than that are unstable. This is not a psychological measure but a health one.  Tiny, little hatchlings are cute as “all get out,” but they haven’t died yet.

One of my favorite cartoons, shows an older gentleman with a wooden peg leg, a hook for a hand, stooped, and carrying a book under his arm approaching the podium where he is about to deliver a keynote address to a packed auditorium of people.  There is no caption but the book under his arm is entitled “Zoo Vet: I Quit” And now, that is a little how I feel. I have no peg leg, hook hand and my stoop only now is beginning, but I got that beat-up feeling in my bones.

Just yesterday I walked across our surgery suite to check on a ferret whose tail I had just amputated and I cracked my head on a surgical light hanging too low for my 6 foot 2 inch frame. Blood poured down my head into my eyes. No big deal, really; we all do this sort of thing to ourselves in our daily routines but in my world it made me wonder just what that ferret had to do with that crack on my head.

“It’s not the animals fault.” I hear all the time.  Like hell. Most of these animals have it out for me. And to say it is not their fault is not to give them the credit they are due. You don’t think animals know what’s up?  From hamster to elephant these freaking animals are scheming on ways to get at me. 

I remember years ago standing at the rail of the elephant enclosure at the Bronx Zoo.  I was just standing there with a hundred other people. Doing nothing; waiting, watching, enjoying these wonderful creatures when one big female casually walks over towards our direction. This was a rare close-up view and I was pleased to be a part of this event.  We all were.  She raised her long, muscular trunk, took a deep breath and blew snot all over my face.

How did she know who I was? It is the same phenomenon as when an Eastern tent caterpillar moth flies through the fields and woods and identifies a black cherry tree. How does she know?  You ask your average American to pick out a black cherry tree in the field behind their house they will have no clue. Yet this barely senescent invertebrate, that weighs less than a gram, with a brain less than a milligram,   can do just that. And into my yard, into my hair, to eat me out of house and cherries. We are not giving brain power in these animals and in us humans enough credit.

So tell me, while I am on snot, what the 150 pound Burmese python was thinking when the two of us were on the Today Show and I am explaining how snakes can’t cough?  Here was my first and only chance at my fifteen minutes of fame, and it decides to take center stage and grab the laugh line by hocking up a goober into my face. This snake takes all of its hidden acting talent and sends a message to the world just what he thinks of me. Do you know how many animals watch TV?

It’s been downhill since then. How about the dog that broke my little finger biting it when it was fully under anesthesia? Even drugs can’t stop their attacks. An iguana bit me once even after it was dead. I still have no feeling in my left thumb where a macaw bit me six months ago. Last week a hamster, a rat and a cockatiel all bit me on the same day.  I’ve learned these things come in threes.  It’s part of the plan.

How about them rabbit people? Every category of pet animal ownerships has its people.  These are the people who admire, adore, and promote their special type of animal to the world and society. Chicken people raise chickens, and sing the praises of fresh eggs and intelligent, personable birds. Turtle people, slow deep thinkers, spend their time freshening turtle habitats, breeding and propagating new little turtles, scratching their turtles’ backs, and singing to them.

I can’t get a fix on rabbit people. This puts a crimp in my style in this column.  I usually get to sit back, look around and go ‘Snake people are cold-blooded,’ ‘Hedge-hog people are prickly,’ or ‘Rat people snivel a lot.’ Up here in the ivy covered penthouse office complex of “The Cold-Blooded Vet” I’m stuck on rabbit people. I am having a hard time exercising my biases and prejudice.

The New England Wildlife Center is an educational institution that cares for animals.  The Center embraces the study of biology, or as I like to say it, ‘the study of life on earth.

Our main avenue of inquiry is in the care of animals.  The word ‘inquiry’ makes us sound like a research organization but in fact the word is used as a way of describing a type of education.  It is our belief that the best teachers are ones that are actively learning and therefore ‘inquiry’ is an essential ingredient if education is going to take place. 

When I say wild dogs I am really referring to the wild canids that inhabit the rural, suburban and urban areas of the South Shore.  These are, of course, the red fox, the gray fox, and the coyote.  I think that it is remarkable that we have three species of wild dog-like creatures that thrive in the midst of our cacophonous, fireworks way of life. 

They live quietly, busily and for the most part unseen through the lacework of roads, highways, backyards, malls, parks, ponds, streams, industrial parks, and playgrounds.

How scrappy! What uncanny skill!

Before launching into whether frogs make good pets, let’s look at some of their biology.  Frogs are vertebrate animals: they have a backbone, and consequently they have a brain.  No deep thoughts here, at least in the way that we humans think about deep thoughts.  It goes without saying that frogs are way better at being frogs than any other group of animals. 

Frogs start life as an egg, a squishy jelly like egg.  Most frogs are bred and hatch in water.  Frogs start life as a tadpole that uses gills to breathe.  As they mature and turn into adult frogs they absorb their gills and develop lungs.  Most go from an herbivorous way of life to a carnivorous way of life.  This means that their digestive tract also makes structural changes to accommodate the way in which nutrients are absorbed into the blood stream. Overall the body shape changes from that of a fish-like animal to the head-up tail-down type of creature we all think of as a frog.

Last Monday, a scorpion attacked me.  She wasn’t trying to sting me; she was trying to pinch me with her pincers.  She was brought to me because she was reported to have an unusual bump on her side.  So to see the said bump I put my face down close to the exam table where she was sitting.  Three other faces joined mine at tabletop to scrutinize this arachnid. And what did she do?  She charged right at my face, pincers flailing.

How did she know that I was the culprit to chase?  I mean there are three other people standing around the exam table with their heads lowered looking. She didn’t chase them, just me. By the way, lest you think I am a wimp, she was a big Emperor scorpion weighing in at 15 grams.  Earlier in the same exam, I had a corn snake that weighed only 5 grams. (By the way, I weigh in at about 100,000 grams.)

I hear a mockingbird outside my writing window.  First he cardinals, then he chips, then he cardinals again.  He is louder, longer and shriller than any other bird in the neighborhood.  He is a vocal bully, so I have named him Limbaugh.

In the distance, about one street over, I hear two crows cawing.  That would be Obama and Biden.  They are black, shiny authoritative figures in the neighborhood.  Just yesterday they sat in a young maple tree in my yard cawing at my cat Skittles.  They’d get down pretty close and caw loudly, letting any bird, squirrel and rodent near by know that Skittles is a-prowl.  Skittles viewed them with a shake of her head and a roll over view.  She looked like I feel when the local cop catches me drifting through the stop sign at the end of my suburban street.