You may wonder how a seemingly "normal", single, attractive ;), intelligent woman such as myself became interested in big scary monitor lizards! If you don't wonder this, too bad! It's my dam page! :)

My sister actually gets the credit for getting me into reptiles. One day, way back in 1988, she brought home a small curly tail lizard "Gizzard". Well, Giz looked awful lonely to me, so I had to go out and buy him a companion, "Cliff"! Cliff was also a curly tail.

My sister Amy.

Well, as it turns out, Giz wasn't lonely, he was ill, and passed away soon after Cliff befriended him. I became more and more enthralled with Cliff. He was too cool. Then one day when I was at a pet store buying Cliff his dinner, I saw it......the Savannah monitor! I kept going back to gaze upon this amazing creature. I bought some books to read up on what is involved in owning one of these as a pet. I then decided to take the plunge and bought "Burton" (any Metallica fans see a pattern here?). Burton was sick from the day I bought him. He didn't grow much, and was lethargic all the time. Thinking back now, I thought he was just an extrordinarily docile creature, but in reality he was a sick lizard :(. But this didn't stop me! I plunged forward!

I found "Sigmund" at the same pet store. Sig was like no other monitor I ever had, or will have again! He actually craved human contact, and got quite angry if he was ignored. He began to recognize the sound of my car pulling into my driveway (seriously!!). He loved milk and ice cream (which was an accidential discovery!). To this day, I really think that Sigmund was an alien disguised as a monitor lizard!

In July of 1996, my Savannah Zeke died of some strange disease of neurological origin. I went the whole way with him, having MRI's done (by sneaking into a human hospital, which will remain nameless, with my vet :). I have contacted people all over the world about this strange condition. There have been many monitors afflicted with it, but nobody knows what it is, what is comes from, or how to stop it. I am currently doing research on my own to get to the bottom of this! I will post something when I am done (conclusive or non-conclusive!)

See Neurological disease in monitor lizards.

So as of now I only have my baby Bandy, my sweet Jezebel, and Anabel the new addition!. But there are reptile shows every month......just don't tell my mum!