Mason Muerhoff
The foot-long reptile was found basking on Bascom, a few thousand miles away from its native territory of Australia.
A bearded dragon drew a small crowd when it was spotted Wednesday by Bascom Hill near Observatory Drive. The foot-long reptile was chilling on a rock wall when Richard Ness, the go-to animal wrangler at UW-Madison, arrived on the scene.
“Anytime there is an animal issue like this, they usually call me,” says Ness, who works at the university’s facilities planning and management department. “Turned out to be easy to catch. I caught it on the first try. Basically, just picked it up with my hands. It hardly even moved.”
The university suspects it's a lost pet since the creature was so docile. Plus, bearded dragons are native to the semiarid woodlands and rocky deserts of Australia — 10,000 miles and a huge ocean away from Wisconsin’s flagship university. A Craigslist ad has been posted to help locate the creature’s owner.
“For now, I have it at the shop in a 40-gallon terrarium. It has a heat lamp to keep warm,” Ness says. “I guess I better find it some crickets. I did feed it a few blueberries already.”
Bearded dragons have become a popular exotic pet. In the wild, the little lizards display dominance or submission using a variety of head bobs. When threatened, bearded dragons will hiss and extend their beards.
Ness says he’s been called to deal with raccoons, possums, chipmunks and small birds that have gotten into UW facilities, appear to be injured or are just in places where they shouldn’t be. He’s been called more than once about red-tailed hawks nesting on campus. When the fledglings are young, they make “a lot of weird noises.” But Ness says usually the young hawks are fine and just waiting for their parents to come home with a meal.
“I’ve only had one call for a snake and it was garter snake. This is the first reptile I’ve seen on campus,” Ness says. “Last fall, I kept getting calls, for like two weeks, about a green-and-yellow parakeet flying over by Russell Labs and Steenbock Library. I was never able to catch that one. But seems like another example of an escaped pet.”
Ness says he’ll keep the bearded dragon safe for another week or so. He’s already located a new home for the little guy if no one claims it.
So, if you’ve lost a bearded dragon, call 608-263-3333. If you abandoned this creature on purpose, you’re a terrible person.