Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Jetzen - you wanted to know how my alligator lizard eggs were doing.

Well -

forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1148169,1148169

First one is out, after only 45 days incubation.
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3.0 WC; 0.2 CB L. getula californiae
0.1 WC; 10 eggs (7/11) Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata

that's way toooooo cool! now it's time to stock up on pinheads! I'd keep every one of those and start my own line of "Funky Gator Lizzies" lol! way neato!

I talked to Fish and Game, the lady there is sure that I can not keep any of these young (well, I could keep 1).

The species has a bag limit of 2, and prodigy of a gravid collected specimen are considered wild caught.

So 2 of them are going to my little brother down in Brentwood, CA - and 8 of them are going to UC Berkeley.

She has to get back to me, but she's pretty sure that if I collect another male, the offspring would be captive bred - and I would be able to keep them so long as I have a captive propogation permit (just got that) and have no more than 30 total native species, with species that can be commercially propogated excepted (IE my Cal Kings would not count towards the 30, but if I caught a skink - it would).

I know where a young male lives, I know he's a male because when I caught him the first time, he showed me his goods (and gave me a nasty bite) - and he has the typical wide head of males.

He actually lives on my street, and at about 11 o'clock at night, almost every night, he camps out at the bottom of a street lamp to catch bugs. So once I offload the babies, I'm thinking about catching him as a mate for her next year, so I can raise the young. He's got a yellow-green tint to him, just like my female, which isn't unusual for the species, but isn't too common up here - where most have a red tint to them.
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3.0 WC; 0.2 CB L. getula californiae
0.1 WC; 10 eggs (7/11) Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata

Those laws in Ca. are B.S.! back in the early 70's it was so cool there. And then fools started getting envenomated and then laws up the ***!
There used to be a super cool store in Frisco called the Herpetarium on Balboa that had everything, including spitters and beadeds then the laws shut it down. The guy who owned it was a super cool head.

I'm originally from San Francisco, lower Haight Street. Californias laws are absolutely ridiculous. A bag limit on Elgaria? They're so common the you can find them under street lights feeding at night! When Rick Staub was looking into the laws about Zonata, the state couldn't even produce a biologist backed population study to back up their need to protect the species. In San Fiasco you can't keep or sell ANY boa or python species! You can have a wild Spilotes, thats 8' and all piss and vinegar, but you can't have Childrens Pythons or a Candoia carinata carinata, which only get about 18". Next thing you know
they pass a law to protect field mice and mosquitos. Long gone will be the days of being able to go to the store and buy mosquito repelant, without a permit LOL!
-Phil

Yeah - I think the Elgaria thing is an accident.

They have several species of lizard for which there is an aggregate bag limit of 16 (might be 12, I'll check) - as in you can have up to 16 of any combination. But Elgaria is not in that group. It should be. Western skinks are, fence lizards are, etc. - but not alligator lizards.

With respect to zonata, what I heard - the real reason is habitat destruction, people taking crowbars to granite crevices trying to find them, destroying micro ecosystems that are used by far more than just zonata.

What's really scarry, they have a bill going around that in its original form, would have outright made it illegal to sell any native california herp, and rodents that are not weened. Fortunately those parts of the bill have been removed - but they still have rediculous requirements on rodent housing in pet stores in the bill.

Personally, I would like see several california species added to the commercial propogation list - including alligator lizards and fence lizards. Both are easy to breed, and are probably a better choice for feeder lizards than anoles. Fence lizards regularly tripple clutch, and if they got loose from the breeding farm - it's a native species, not an invasive species.
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3.0 WC; 0.2 CB L. getula californiae
0.1 WC; 10 eggs (7/11) Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata