Blood moon really IS for new beginnings...

A few weeks ago, we had a bit of excitement here at the house.

It was a pretty warm day, so I had left the dragons' cage doors open for extra ventilation (it gets hot really fast in the melamine cages they live in.

Generally Smaug likes to hop down out of his cage, and wander around the house. This has never been a problem, as he always heads for one of three places:

1. The kitchen door, to go sit in the sun beam there
2. The back of living room couch, to harass the fish in the fish tank
3. the bedroom to climb up on the bed and get attention.

The girls generally stay in their cage.

Kaida stays on her log,

and Tia sits by the cage door, and watches everything...

But they never actually LEAVE the cage.

However, this wasn't the case on March 24th.

As I said, I had left the cages open for ventilation. I was lying in bed, doing something on the computer. I looked up and saw this:

Kaida says "Hello!"

Just sitting there on my foot, staring at me.

I sat up, picked her up, went to put her back, and saw that neither of the OTHER dragons were in their cages either.

Also, generally not a problem. Smaug is so big it's nearly impossible to lose him, Tia... well... She makes a lot of noise playing in things, so it's hard to lose her too.

BUT, frisky male loose during breeding season at the same time as a barely old enough female... Especially when that male is desperate enough to go after the snakes... who happen to be female...

"Hey, they're female, right?"

He even went after the cat, though I wasn't fast enough with the camera for that, she RAN...

They were found in different rooms, on opposite sides of the house, so I was hoping they hadn't found each other. I had wanted to wait a few months still, because Smaug is a lot bigger than Tiamat. He is a giant, and she isn't.

Hope faded though, as she started very quickly getting fatter and fatter. And lumpier.

Knocked up dragon belly.

She spent this past week digging everywhere, and making a complete mess of her cage by excavating her dig box. She wouldn't stay in for more than about 5 minutes though, then would come out and run around crazily trying to dig through the walls of the cage.

So very proud of her mess.

Last night was the "blood moon". It was amazing to watch, absolutely beautiful.

This morning, Tia was in her box when I checked around 8am, digging.

10am... still digging.

Noon... in the box, no digging.

1pm, looking out of the box, finally came out around 1:15.

She looked a lot skinnier.

Not knocked up dragon belly

I pulled out the lay box, and started slowly digging it out with my hands, and putting the dirt in a second container.

I had nearly emptied the whole box, and had decided I must be mistaken, when I found them:

 

 

Buried all the way at the bottom, under almost 6 inches of ground, damp coconut husk.

15 eggs, perfectly formed, healthy, and fertilized.

Good thing I bought an incubator yesterday.

So, now we know that Smaug and Tia did, in fact, find each other on their dragon adventures out and about in the house.

And the wait begins.