Here's the long story, with I'm sure tangential rants and digressions galore. OMG, I just hate tangential rants and digressions! It's like when--KIDDING! Ha!
So, guess who always has to catch the crickets to feed to the gecko because her spouse won't go near them? Oh, I gave it away there, didn't I? It was a rhetorical question anyway, because obviously it's the mom. That goes without saying with pets I'm learning (guess how excited I am to get a dog after this gecko experience?)
Well, last night was feed the gecko night, and Nina was helping me (dear, sweet Nina. She really wants to take over feeding the gecko, she gives me hope that I won't be doing all of the work when we get a dog after all). But, the crickets are disgusting, and she just can't bring herself to stick her hands in their tank, pick up one of their disgusting, cricket-poo covered toilet paper roll hides, and shake them into the empty butter tub (because that's how it's done. Then, for the record, one must quickly put the lid on and shake, because one has already added the powdered gecko vitamins to the butter tub, and one wants the crickets coated in the powder. I don't even want to know what all this stuff costs).
ANYWAY, there's like 30 crickets in this tiny tank, and there's poo on the toilet paper rolls (at least, that's what I assume it is), and it smells, and Nina doesn't want to stick her hands in there. Neither do I for that matter, but I do. But this time, a cricket jumped on my thumb and just as quickly jumped from there clear onto the floor! I was startled and dropped the butter tub into the tank. I intended to quickly capture the escaped cricket, but then the crickets all went crazy. Popping around like mad in that tank. Then two jumped up and landed on the edge of the tank, and I screamed, and yelled to Nick to get something to catch them in. The girls, panic-stricken, ran and hid in the kitchen. Nick likewise sprinted for some tupperware (for catching crickets, of course).
The first guy that leapt from my thumb was on the floor, and we got him easily. But the two that jumped after that were much harder. One was under the dresser the tank is on, and started climbing up the wall. The other was stuck in this weird tank lip that I'm not even going to try to describe. Just trust me that it was impossible for me to catch it, but it was possible that he could jump out. So I trapped him for the moment with some paper.
We focused on trying to catch the cricket who was now underneath the dresser. Also, I am mistaken. There was a fourth cricket on top of the dresser which I caught under this little vase. It was such pandemonium that I forgot about him. Or her.
By now the girls, still anxious, had come back to the living room to see what was going on. Nina was worried that the crickets were going to live in the walls and start chirping, because we were warned that this could happen.
Well, there was a final capture attempt, a miss, some profanity and blame. Marital tensions rose. Then 5 minutes later Nick found the missing cricket down the hall on the way to the kitchen, and he was fed to the gecko like the rest.
Then, I somehow managed (brilliantly, if I don't say so myself) to get the cricket in the stupid lip part of the tank to crawl onto some paper, and quickly trapped him in the faithful old butter tub. Crisis averted!
Really, I am so done with this gecko. Two more days!!
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