Charlie, the bearded dragon

Here is Charlie, the bearded-dragon kept by Melody, a departmental colleague and my housemate when I first arrived in Davis.Charlie was pretty long, about 30-35cm (tail included) long. I thought Charlie looked pretty menacing, with all the spikes and its grim face, yet surprisingly it's one of the popular common reptile pets. The fact that those spikes are soft and that its grim face is a mere masquerade for its actual tame nature probably has something to do with its popularity.
Charlie lives in an aquarium kept warm by artificial lights. He eats...cockroaches. One of them was sitting nicely on Charlie's nose! The reason Charlie didn't just snap up the cockroach was because it was already passed his usual feeding time, and that they had cooled down his aquarium a bit before the 'show'. Since reptiles are ectothermic and require external heating to get active, Charlie was definitely not in the mood/state to catch cockroaches, or even digest them.
Nevertheless, several minutes later, that cockroach said 'hi' to a couple of his friends in Charlie's stomach.

Here's a better look at the cockroaches. Melody buys them packaged in a carton. To be frank, the cockroaches are prettier than Charlie (in my humble opinion).

On keeping reptiles as pets...it still baffles me. Pets mean extra work, so for me at least, I better get much more than just another mouth to feed in the house to justify the extra work. Pets are meant to be companion, no? And it can't be a companion if I can't connect with it. Connection...is best achieved if we can see eye to eye, literally. That's why I would rather have a dog than any other animal as pets. Dog eyes are just so...expressive!

On that note, here's Bowie contemplating the secrets of the cosmos.