April 2025's Tiny Reptile and Mini Amphibian pin designs: Argentine Black & White Tegu and Spotted Salamander 🦎
These designs are available as pins and stickers on my Patreon until the end of day today and will ship in April!
These are so cute!
Paging @kaijutegu
you best believe I've been signed up for this pin club since... a while now.
for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits
It's 2025, and we're sadder than ever!
Maybe it's time for a Sad Bastard Cookbook sequel? Maybe a spin-off for parents of small children? Maybe both?
I'm new here. What's a Sad Bastard Cookbook?
Glad you asked! We wrote a cookbook full of judgement-free recipes you can make when you're suffering from mental illness, physical disability, poverty, or anything else late-stage capitalism throws up that makes basic self-care feel impossible. Some of the recipes were our own, some we collected from the community.
The ebook is free--you can download a copy here if you wanna check it out.
I'm a community! Or at least, a Person! Can I contribute my recipe for survival food?
YES PLEASE.
If you have a survival recipe that you make for yourself, or to feed a baby, toddler, or small child, please share that recipe here.
I’m a fan of the original Sad Bastard Cookbook—when will the new ones be here?
We really have no idea. We’re in the very early planning and writing stages of the two projects, but when we have more information, you’ll probably see it here first!
Signal boost!
Sad Bastard Cookbook is one of my most recommended cookbooks, right up there with Leanne Brown's Good and Cheap. Everybody in my circle is a sad bastard, pretty much, myself included, and this book is a lifesaver.
Something really neat I saw at Brookfield Zoo yesterday - not only are these signs not AI art but they actually credited the designers/illustrators AND the people who took the reference photos!
And like, this is IMPORTANT. It's important because art and photography are work, and important work for science and education. It's important because it gives human beings recognition. It's important because other zoos aren't necessarily doing this- like, I'm a member at Mesker in Evansville and I caught them using an unidentified AI image in an article about an animal. If I'm reading a zoo's publication, I should be able to trust that everything in there is real. I shouldn't have to wonder if I'm looking at a sea turtle or a machine's hallucination of what a sea turtle might be. I should be able to trust that what I'm getting is verifiable.
These are just signs on a privacy fence while they renovate the pachyderm yards. They're not really education, they're not designed to be studied, they're not even designed to be here long-term- they're just here to be pleasant and distract from construction. The zoo could have used AI to make these designs and slapped some text on top. Very few people would have noticed, and fewer would have cared.
But they didn't. They took the time and money to have real people design these signs, and they took the time and money to use real photographs for reference. They said, without saying it out loud, that there's value in human graphic design and human work, and that they care enough about the environmental and ethical concerns surrounding AI image generation to take the more expensive, more time-consuming option.
And I appreciate that.
ewww
That's a homunculus
Have you seen that someone (Clint from Clint's Reptiles) target-trained his tegu? I thought it was super cool. I know a lot of tegus can be a bit bitey because they associated human hands with food, so they think it's feeding time, which is why Clint decided to give target-training a try.
(Clint is a zoologist with a YouTube channel for people who aren't familiar)
Idk, tegus are so cool. Reptiles (and a lot of non-mammals tbh) are a lot smarter than a lot of people think and target training is a good demonstration of that (I also know of an animal sanctuary that is target training an alligator, so it's not just tegus)
Short answer: yes, I watched all of Clint's videos about argentine tegus, including the one showing how he target-trained Gus-Gus. These videos helped affirm my interest in adopting a tegu myself, but the one of the largest factors have been posts by @kaijutegu showing how intelligent and rewarding tegus can be as companions.
Before picking up my new friend from her old keepers, I bought a shocking pink dog toy to be our training target. I chose this specific shade because I personally am allergic to pink, and don't own anything of that color, which would make the toy uniquely associated with feeding time.
I stuck it on a stick and have been showing it to her when offering food. Her lack of appetite and desire to just nap (trying to brumate, I guess) make it a bit difficult with the training, since food is the main reward in that system, and if she's not interested in food, the rest just doesn't work.
The flip side of this is that she's not been trying to nibble on my hands as a snack, so there's that.
We're still establishing rapport, though, and having a solid foundation of trust is pretty much a requirement for any enriching interaction between her and me. I'm looking forward to when we get there!
She was being given up because of changes to her temperament, supposedly becoming cage-defensive and bitey, explained by her entering "guberty" (tegu puberty). I haven't seen a lot of that from her, but this may be because I'm a New Person and therefore Scary, I don't know.
She did bite my sleeve once while I was trying to get her from under a sideboard, but that was clearly because she felt cornered (which she was). After being extracted from under the furniture and on the way to the cage, she also scratched my wrist trying to wiggle herself free, but that one time was very different from her typical behavior. Since then the access to underneath the sideboard has been barricaded shut, so as to avoid repeating this situation, as neither of us enjoyed it.
I have been picking her up almost daily without incident since, so she's not quite the anger monster I was expecting.
Note on picking up tegus: My understanding is that the best way to pick them up is kind of like you would a bunny rabbit: the football hold. Scoop your forearm under the tegu's chest, tummy, and pelvic girdle, then gently grip the base of tail with other hand. My new friend hasn't objected to being lifted that way.
PS - This is not a blanket endorsement of all things Clint has ever said and done. I'm highly critical of his support of breeding spider ball pythons, for one, so don't at me. However the vast majority of his videos are filled with good information, and if he manages to prevent people from impulse-buying a venomous snake or a crocodilian, he's doing good.
Sometimes they train themselves, too.
Nakajima stations on the color yellow. Specifically, a yellow folder, but if she thinks she'll get attention, she'll station on anything yellow. Why? Well, the folder I keep student papers in is yellow. I have them turn their papers in next to it at the end of lab. She figured out if she stands on yellow, she gets attention and pets.
So now if she sees the yellow folder, she goes to it and waits. And waits. And waits. Please pet her. She's so lonely. She never gets attention. (This is a lie.)
Indian Spiny-tailed Lizards (Saara hardwickii), in a big time squabble, family Agamidae, Rajasthan, India
photograph by Pradyut Kumar Das
me when i fucking GET YOU
God, what have you done
You're a pink lizard girl and you dance at the club
tegus are apparently invasive in florida and I'm like what? since when were dogs not allowed?
That's where this one's from! She spent the first six months of her life dodging alligators and eating carrion, and now she rides in the cart at Joann Fabrics with her little crocheted blankie and wears a cowboy hat!
Geckos can save you up to 15% on car insurance, but tegus can save you from upselling tactics at the oil change place because the techs just wanna say hi to the lizard.
(Normally she doesn't get to ride on the dashboard but when the car is off like this it's safe for her to be up there.)
She does actually get really interested in what's going on, it's just that as soon as she sees the phone come out she comes over and starts tongue flicking at the camera lens bc I've kinda trained her to do that.
