Our Tiny New Friend

Yesterday morning I heard a big ole ruckus (do you like the way I sneaked in - or is it snuck in? - the word of the day...ruckus...from Word Girl?) going on across the hall from my office (which happens to be the women's restroom). (I mean, across the hall happens to be the women's restroom, not my office happens to be the women's restroom). I went out in the hall to investigate, and it turns out the last person into the restroom had been not-so-cordially greeted by a little house gecko, who had been trapped in there for who knows how long (seeing as how it was Monday morning) and was far more scared than his would-be rescuer. (I'm pretty sure that's not a run-on sentence. I double-checked.)

I created my own ruckus by exclaiming, "I want it! I want it!" Not my most refined moment. But my kids have been wanting one for the longest time, and we've never been able to find one. So we captured the little guy, dumped him into a plastic jar, put in a couple of drips of water and a twig of leaves, and snapped the lid shut. He kept me company, scared stiff sitting on my desk all day (him, not me).

The kids were So. Excited. when I picked them up. We left Mr. Gecko at the babysitter's house so he wouldn't bake in the car, then headed to the pet store to pick up a few necessities. Actually, all we bought was a little plastic cage (because the one that used to house our hermit crabs is currently occupied by Kloe's colony of snails) and some mulch for the flooring. It seems little house geckos like to eat crickets, and our friend is so tiny that he has to have some sort of special, miniature variety of crickets, and the pet store was out of them and wouldn't be getting any until today. (that's probably a run-on). The friendly pet store man told us to "just look around the house for some beetles or cockroaches or something". Um, ok.

So we brought our little friend - now affectionately named Sammy - home and got his cage all set up with some sticks, some rocks, and a water bottle cap full of water. We set him on top of a heating pad (per pet store instructions), and The Mister and I proceeded to spend half an hour outside looking for Sammy's dinner. We found not. one. bug. Can you believe it? Not one! Poor little Sammy. Who knows how long it had been since he'd had anything to eat, and now he was going to have to wait another whole day.

Finally, after work today, I went back to the pet store to buy a dozen of the tiniest crickets known to man. They're called "pinhead" crickets, which is presumably a comment on their roughly-as-big-as-the-head-of-a-pin size, and not their intelligence. We rushed home, praying that Sammy was no worse off for his unplanned fast. Much to our relief he seemed fine, but he was oh so happy to see some dinner hopping around.

The pouring of the crickets:


And here's our sweet friend scoping out his prey:


In case you can't quite tell just how tiny he is? He's just about....this big.


Poor little guy, he was starving! I'm pretty sure he ate all but one of the crickets in one sitting. And after he was done, he had a cute little q-tip sized full tummy.

Guess we'll be buying more crickets tomorrow!