Major Crab >:Z

[Bwindi]

Hey guys,

My tegu, Cricket, is a year old this month and just recently started acting up.

He did this a few months ago and I thought he might be going through sexual maturity at the time. He calmed down in a few days.

Well, he is doing it again and I am wondering if he is having another "growth spirt."

His temperament is soft as butter 90% of the time. Now he is poofin' at me! :huh:

 

[Draco D Tegu]

Mine's about a year old and has started wigging out on me too. I think it's just thier age. Don't let them scare you so that you don't handle them. I get a little weirded out too, when they come at me full force, but I try and stand my ground.

 

[reptastic]

<<<also got a yearling, she tried to act up but i stood my grounds with her, once she figured out im not scared of her she pretty much gave up

 

[M4A2E4]

About a month or two ago Taco started acting up too. A few weeks ago when I opened his cage he lunged and bit my toes. Now I wear shoes whenever I'm letting him walk around. That same day he was crawling on my lap and in my arms as if nothing was wrong. He sniffed one hand, crawled on me, went to the other, curled up and did nothing, etc. Then out of the middle of nowhere he walked up to my left hand and bit my index finger really hard and broke the skin. I flinched and knocked something off of a desk behind me. I guess that excited him and he charged towards that (I think it was a plastic bottle), but then got bored immediately after and crawled back into his cage. I still cannot figure out why he did that. It reminds me of any generic Warner Brothers cartoon where the main character randomly waltzes up to some antagonist and slaps him across the face out of the middle of nowhere. He showed no signs of aggression before doing that, then continued on as if the whole thing never happened.

For the past several weeks since then he seems to be back to normal. He has shown virtually no aggressive or defensive behavior. Now I can gingerly pick him up from the ground and onto my lap/into his feeding bin/etc while he's walking around and he doesn't seem bothered by it at all, unless I'm holding him funny and he feels like he's about to fall. A few times I've been on my computer desk and I feel him clawing at my leg trying to climb up. I pick him up, and he either sits in my lap or crawls on my keyboard, interrupting whatever unimportant activity I was doing.

I want to think that his moody puberty stage is over, but I am unwilling to give him the chance to bite my finger or toes again. The one thing that he used to do but does not anymore is fall asleep while I am petting him outside of his cage. Now he just completely ignores what I'm doing and goes off as if I weren't even there. I haven't tried petting him while in his cage. The first time I discovered his change in attitude was when I tried to do so and he lunged at me. I assume he doesn't like me intruding on his personal space, and I haven't tested the issue since then.