This story begins about a year and a half ago. After completing the hellish process of the comprehensive examination in order to continue with my PhD, I was stressed with my academic life. It was at this time that I found an inspiring story about a girl who purchased a bearded dragon to reduce stress and anxiety. As dragons were one of the few pets the landlord would allow, I decided to go for it. And to make it better, why not go for an animal in need of a new home. A second-hand lizard I suppose.
When you search online, one of the most heart-breaking things that I found was people who would buy dragons as cute babies, keep them for about a year, and then try to get rid of them as they grew up and weren’t as cute anymore. My future dragon came from one of these homes.I suppose this venture turned out to be more of a rescue mission than I anticipated. The dragon had become malnourished as she refused to eat anything but crickets. Due to neglect, she wasn’t used to being handled. And she had just been moved to a new environment. Essentially what I had just brought into my home was a wild dragon. The first things I did were to research online on dragon forums how best to proceed followed by a vet visit to seek some professional advice.
Basically all I got from these sources could be summed up in this phrase: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.” Just sitting there and hoping the dragon would come around from “hard love” was not the advice I was hoping to find.And that’s when Jedi training kicked in. Everything I had read and heard thus far had treated dragons as a pet, an inferior animal which you should try to force into submission. But this was another living creature arising from the Force just as I had. What right did I have to consider myself as somehow better than this dragon? Yes, she had come under my care and her continued survival was my responsibility. The overlord-slave relationship that seemed to be developed from the advice I was hearing could only result in a relationship based on fear and potentially Stockholm syndrome.I knew then what I needed to do.
I needed to nurture the shared life force between us and develop a relationship of trust. This wasn’t an inferior animal, this was a friend, an equal. And thus began the process of putting forth the positive energy that I was hoping to receive from such an animal companion. To work to understand this animal and work with it rather than against it. Nature is, after all, one of the greatest teachers we have in life.Fast forward a year and a half later, skipping over a lot of details of the entire process. The dragon, now named Meraxes, has become a huge fan of cuddling. She has discovered her new favorite food: acorn squash. She looks incredibly stylish and can explore the world to her leisure (at least when it is warm enough out) now that she has been leash trained. She will still flair her beard at strangers (kind of like the dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park). That just means she and all of us for that matter can still find ways that we can improve ourselves to nurture our connection with those around us.
