10/21/2026
🦎 HAPPY NATIONAL REPTILE AWARENESS DAY 🦎
🌍 Reptiles have been on this earth for over 300 million years, long before us. They've survived ice ages and extinction events, quiet and patient, asking for very little. And somehow, they're still the most misunderstood animals in the room.
🐍 A reptile won't run to the door to greet you. It won't beg for attention. What it gives you is trust, earned slowly, on its terms, a little more every day. Anyone who has ever had a nervous gecko finally take food from their hand, or a shy snake relax into being held, knows that feeling. It's small. And it's everything. ✨
👀 Keeping reptiles teaches you to slow down. To watch. To learn what another living thing needs when it can't tell you, and to keep learning, and keep doing better, for the whole of its life.
🥗 That means the real things every reptile depends on. Nutritious food. 💡 The right lighting. 🏠 A cage and environment built around what that animal actually needs to feel safe and thrive.
🐊 Loving reptiles has taken us on some real adventures, to more wonderful places than we could ever name. Here are just a few. We have been to Iguanaland in Punta Gorda, Florida, the wonderful place Ty Park built for education and conservation. We have been through the Everglades and down to the Keys. At Flamingo, down near the Keys, we spotted crocodiles in the wild, right where they belong. We also stopped at the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key, the only freshwater lake in all the Keys, tucked away in the Key Deer Refuge.
🦎 And we finally made it to The Reptarium and LegaSea Aquarium in Utica, Michigan. I spotted Brian Barczyk's wife Lori there and I was too nervous to say hello, but what an amazing place she has helped create. Brian passed away from pancreatic cancer, but his dream is alive in every corner of it. Lori now works with Sky Foundation to raise awareness and fund pancreatic cancer research, keeping his fight going. Please support pancreatic cancer research, and if you ever get the chance, go visit LegaSea Aquarium and The Reptarium. It is worth the trip.💜
💚 That's why we do what we do at Dragon Greens Deli. A reptile's whole life depends on what the person caring for it knows. So we share what we've learned before, during, and long after someone brings one home, doing our best, always learning, always growing. 📚 They can't speak up for themselves. We can. 🗣️
🎪 We bring that love home, too, at community events like the critter meet and greet at Legacy Grove Park here in Wi******er, where Julia and Bartholomew, our red footed tortoise, help our neighbors meet these animals up close.
🎉 So today, here's to the bearded dragons, the geckos, the snakes, the turtles, and to everyone who loves them, protects them, and speaks up for them. They've earned it. 🐢✨
Reptiles, we love and appreciate you. 🦎
******ersReptileSpot
