Helena Christensen has a lizard: My son is an avid animal collector

Helena Christensen has a pet lizard. The supermodel and her 11-year-old son Mingus share their New York apartment with a bright orange bearded dragon who loves nothing more than to feast on insects.

“My son is an avid animal collector,” she said. “We have a bearded dragon. She eats so much — I have to go get crickets for her all the time. But I have a son, that’s what happens.”

The 42-year-old catwalk beauty says Mingus – her child with actor Norman Reedus – loves animals so much he has ambitions to open a pet store when he is older, but she believes he can be anything he wants because he is so smart.

“He’s pretty smart,” she said. “He’s very advanced in arithmetic and all the science subjects. But his father is a really great artist, a painter and a sculptor, so he’s got that side and I love to draw as well, so I think he’s got a good mixture. And he’s a chess genius. That, he didn’t get from me.”

When she is not busy feeding her pet lizard, Helena loves to collect antiques and when she is not hunting for miniature dolls or classic furniture she likes to add to her menagerie of ornamental animals.

“I started collecting porcelain owls years ago, before everyone else did,” she said. “Now, I’m collecting platypuses.”