angelicsong.net Blog

      Ok.  This all came about when we found the wild, Western Skink, Lizzie.  The adorable, fluffy, purry cats had chewed on it and played with it, as cats do, and when I found it, it had no tail and was severly traumatized.  I’m a mammal person.  I have no idea how to care for reptiles.  I quickly “Googled” lizards and then narrowed it down and found that we had on our hands a Western Skink – native to northwestern United States.  I thought I’d read that they like worms.  Well, Lizzie wouldn’t eat the worms I put in the plastic container with her and her water.  I made a terrarrium for her.  I put the worms in the soil too, as well as baby spider plants, a shamrock rhyzome, a polka dot plant, and another plant that had been a gift.  I was quite busy, and I thought that cold-blooded animals didn’t eat often.  So, the morning I went to get the crickets – about three days later, I came back with pinhead (baby) crickets, and Lizzie wouldn’t move and was stiff when I picked “her” up.  Her body now rests in my flower planter on the back patio.

      There were tears at our house – myself included for not getting crickets sooner.  My husband, in distress, said, “Can’t you go get another one for $5.00?”  I, already knowing how pet stores price pets, said, “$5.00?!  Are you kidding?”  Then I went to two pet stores and found something close to Lizzie, an Orange-Throated Pigmy Skink ($8.99) - our new “Lizzie”.  She was a cute, little thing, and I could hardly feel her at all, when I picked her up.  She had plenty of pinhead Crickets to eat.  And, I’m happy to say “she” is still with us!  It is quite terrified of me, obviously, not understanding my benevolent nature.  So, instead of a “pet,” she’s more of an “observe”.

       They did it again!  Out on the stairs in the garage was another, helpless lizard tonight!  I “Googled” it.  I think it’s a Western Fence Lizard.  I donned rubber gloves – S.T.A.T., and scooped it up, depositing it into Lizzie’s terrarrium.  It was cold and helpless – poor, little thing.  It’s name is “Rocky”.  It seems to like Lizzie’s hang out very much.  “He” got all warm under the heat lamp and next to the heating pad and seems to be doing fine.

      As I sit here listined to the soft chirping of the adult crickets in a different terrarrium – I’m breeding them, so their babies can be lizard food (the adults have amnesty), I’m quite sure that our cats, Jonesie and Kitty are purrrrrrrrrrrrfectly pleased with themselves from all the excitement caused by their gifts to us.  I assume that as long as we have cats, we’ll have lizards.  As I sit here in the still of the night typing, I’m very much liking the sweet song of crickets in my kitchen.

One of the saddest things is my children not knowing my dad, the most wonderful dad in the world.  He wasn’t perfect - by a long shot, but he loved me, he treated me well, he chose me.  You see, he adopted me, and he died when I was six months pregnant with my first child – with his very first grandchild.  You see, my children don’t know how calm, gentle and patient their grandpa was.  They don’t know what his smile looked like or how his voice and laugh sounded.  They don’t know how he liked to just snuggle – all stretched out on the floor – and watch a movie or a favorite t.v. series of his.  They don’t know how wise he was or how very proud he was that he was going to be a grandpa.  He would have absolutely spoiled them rotten!  He would have built them the best quality, roomiest, most durable play house in the history of play houses.  He would have taught them to be good people by having them sweep up the sawdust after him as he worked as a carpenter and builder – just like he had my brother and I do.  He would have sat them on his lap and asked them what was the matter when they were upset.  He would have then boughten them a little something special or slipped them some spending money and told them not to tell their sibs, because he didn’t have enough cash, at the moment, for everyone.  They would have seen a grown man dote on a toddler.  As they grew, he would have taken them to lunch and spent one-on-one time with them.  They missed going to Christmas Day movies with their grandpa.  They missed the good smell of fresh sawdust and the reverberating sound of hammered nails.  They missed sitting on the porch swing  with him and swinging and sitting and talking.  They missed going snowmachining and changing their clothes in the cramped cab of a pick-up truck and then, having to use the toilet of the great, cold outdoors – with no toilet paper – up in the beautiful, still mountains.  They missed water-skiing behind grandpa’s boat on a beautiful mountain lake and watching fireworks cascade over the same lake on the Fourth-of-July, standing at Grandpa’s side.  It’s so very sad that they will never experience life with their grandfather.  It’s one of the saddest things in the whole world.