Dec29

the odyssey.

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pretzel rod, the albino leopard gecko (pre-odyssey).

 last weekend

i stayed with the grandies

while their mom and dad were out of town

and

for some reason

during the last hour i was there

the two friendly house cats

decided to make a snack out of p-rod.

i had no idea this happened until i got home and got the call:

“the cats somehow got the screen off of the top of his terrarium and ate the gecko!”

imagine how badly i felt

that the murder had happened on my watch.

grandie f had just gotten this young gecko

for his birthday 6 weeks ago and was very sad.

he had replaced pretzel,

the tiny, twisty snake who was let go in the backyard.

the next day i picked him up at school and we planned

to make a memorial stone for pretzel rod to put in the garden.

we talked for a while about love and loss and pets and nature.

imagine my surprise when i got a call late that night that he had been found!

he must have crawled into the boys’ dirty laundry

which was on their bedroom floor

to escape the cats

hid out for 24 hours

 then was scooped up

 unknowingly

 put in the washing machine

with the laundry

where he was washed, rinsed and spun.

what?!

he had survived

a feline attack

a day in smelly boy pants

fear

starvation

and

waterboarding?

he was washed, spun and rinsed

but there he was

sitting on the bottom of the washer

and after all of this, he was alive!

f yelled out over the phone:

“and he’s getting stronger by the minute!”

mom and dad said he looked rough and didn’t know if he’d make it

but he was indeed alive.

my task the next day was to get him some special treats

wax worms

(the big macs of the lizard world)

from the pet store to see if he would eat.

sure enough, he had some dinner

the first he’d eaten in a few days.

hopefully he’s on the mend

and we won’t have to go through a ‘second death’.

he looks a little lighter in color,

has some bite marks from the cats,

and doesn’t move as much

but he is alive and that is amazing.

—

“it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― leon c. megginson

44 responses »

  10. Jeez, this reminds me of my girls! Robyn had a pet garter snake that she’d wrap around her head like a halo, and he’d go everywhere around the house with her. We all fell in love with him. Then she had a newt who escaped his aquarium, crawled in an old brown lunch bag, and dehydrated. When I went to empty her trash, I heard the rattle in the bag, found him, and tossed him back in the aquarium so that Robyn could “find” his little, dead body and bury him, but when she got home from school, he’d puffed back out and wanted fed:)

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  16. Oh my . . . what an amazing fete, to survive the cats, the clothes, then the washing machine! Thank goodness he wasn’t subjected to the dryer. A Christmastime miracle story if ever there was, and sure to be retold around the holiday table in years to come.

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  20. What a lovely lizard, he is a tough cookie thank crunchie. We used to have a bearded dragon and he did escape the cat without harm one day . From then on we made sure the cat is not around when we took him out. ( he did die a natural death unfortunately) My son now has a blue tongued skunk. Not my favourite though, I preferred the Beardie.

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