TL;DR version at the bottom for you not-so-brave souls.

So I always have things to say but I never say them so I'm just going to recap since February in the lightest way possible.

I released my frog Kermie back into the wild, so my photogenic frog is now out in the world making babies or otherwise. I tend to prefer to think about the former, as I'd rather not think about my froggie being eaten. o-o; Artistically, I only really did one thing that month, and that was help Vinnie make a Star Trek cake for Sammu's birthday. It was epic. We even had Pin-The-Pants-On-Kirk. You wouldn't believe how easy it was to find a pants-less Kirk. Or maybe you could believe. *chuckles* Depends on how well you know Kirk, I guess. (Too much!!)

I got my first crested gecko ever, but he was a rescue, and one of questionable health. "Experience is something you don't get until just after you needed it." Truism, and a painful one at that. Mohinder, my crestie, had been suffering from Entamoeba for weeks, and already was at the terminal stage when I got him. I loved him dearly in the short time that I had him.

In April I went to SakuraCon. Not much to say there, I found my joy muted after Mohinder's wracking illness, and so I took few pictures and brought little home. Later in the month, Vinnie got another crested gecko, Nero. He spent his quarantine time in my closet, happily roaming around in his own 18x18x24 Exo terra, which any crestie person knows is a mansion for one crested gecko.

In May, Tigerlily, Vinnie's crestie succummed to Entamoeba-related internal organ damage, but Nero stayed strong. A stray white husky found her way into our yard, tore up the back fence, and left a gaping hole out the back. So much for that! School during this time was alright, but I wasn't exactly flourishing in my classes.

In June, I was given a leopard gecko of a friend of mine's(formerly named Thor, new name not selected yet), and gave up Nero to his rightful owner after she had to give away her beloved cockatiel Yuki(photos in my gallery) at the order of her mother.

With only a leopard gecko and a gaping wound and empty exo terra, I contacted a friend on a reptile forum, and she offered me not just a gorgeous subadult male crested gecko, but eggs, too! Ariel drove us down to meet her down in Portland. Took all morning to get there, and I walked away with the most precious crowned partial pinner harley I named Zarame, Japanese for brown sugar, and three crested gecko eggs. Ariel walked away with two eggs and two hatchlings.

Very suddenly, my beloved little Zarame developed some sort of foot rot, and overnight he was gone. I was devastated. This all right before I was supposed to leave for vacation at the beach. You can imagine why I didn't want to go to the beach after that, I really didn't feel like celebrating.

And yet, and yet..

Three days later, my little loveling hatched, the first of my three eggs. Suddenly life wasn't so bad. Suddenly there was hope, and I didn't feel like a terrible person. Utterly smitten, head over heels, here I am with the first birth in my room. For the first time, something was born here instead of spending its last days here. I've kept fish for years but nothing can or will breed, so my "children" are my fish. But now.. Now I have something greater in a smaller package, a tiny precious geckoling as long as my pinky. I can hold it up to the light and see its tiny lungs inflate with miniscule puffs of air. I can watch its little heart beat, each tiny, concise little beat..

Can you see how bad I've got the love bug?

We went to the flight museum that holds the Spruce Goose, went gift shop surfing, drove ATVs across the dunes, drove past the Seal Caves, went to tidal pools, chased the surf down and away as the tide went out, and high tailed it playfully as the surf returned the chase back up the beach.

A little piece of me needed the ocean as badly as I need air. I needed the briny air, the hair-tousling wind, the chill bite of the water on naked feet, the heavy wet clumps of sand between my toes, and the hours of walking and sating wanderlust along the coast. I explored every nook and cranny, every shell and bit of debris. Every crab carcass, every turn the fresh water took on its path to the sea. I absorbed it all. I drew a huge bust of my dragon form on the beach, and just as I'd carved the last fin in, the ocean swept my slate clean. I accepted the rush of change and the erasure of my efforts with a grin and skipped along to my next whimsical moment of intrigue.

Vinnie's precious cockatiel passed away. In an effort to ease the pain and give her something to think about, we went out and found a delightful pair of baby budgerigars(none of that parakeet foolishness, they're budgerigars damn it!), one lime green, one creamy lemon with vision impairments, which we learned later. Later in the evening we hit the fourth pet store in the day, and found a neglected, terribly depressed baby budgerigar sitting in the bottom corner of its cage, giving us the Look. The look that says, "I just want to die. Leave me here."

We took her home.

Dehydrated, hungry, covered in feces, the root cause of her problems was surprisingly simple: Her nails were overgrown, claws digging into her feet and tripping her up. She was so young, she didn't know how to perch on anything, and her feet prevented any successful efforts. I had to clip her nails near to the quick, release her, and show her I meant no harm. She's now the healthy, happy, awkward, gawky near-fledgeling she should have been before. Her cage mates are getting along as well as can be expected, picking on her every so often but never ever letting her from sight without panicked calls of "WHERE ARE YOU?! D8"

Craigslist, FYI, I curse you. You're a terrible enabler. Not long after we got a free 29 gallon terrarium for Nero, someone was selling a pair of crested geckos on craigslist for $50, setup included.

Now, as wonderful as the geckos are, they were kept in terrible condition, their terrarium reeking to high heaven of two years' buildup of ammonia. The female had facial scarring, the male underweight, and they were raised on the worst diet a crested gecko can be kept on. I'm surprised they're in as good of condition as they are. But they'll only get better now that they're on the correct diet in a clean enclosure, their habitat requirements being met.

And now Kyoko, lady red, is due to lay anytime now.

The Fourth was boring all day, 'til we played hide-and-seek in the park. I'm telling you, it's not that big a park, but there are some epic hiding places if you look hard enough, including the not-so-obvious, right-in-plain-sight hiding spots, garbage cans, concrete fire pits, bushes, and trees. I vouched for a plain-sight spot and chilled near a crowd of other park-goers, and was the last to be found. Woo! We made smores, I was called the pyromaniac/fire master as I started and kept the blaze going, and once the fire was out, we sat on the dock and watched the fireworks all around us.

Last night I did an impromptu photo shoot of my baby crestie, and some of them turned out really, really cute. What I really wanted people to get a feel of is just how tiny my little loveling is. :333333

I HEAR CRICKETS IN MY CLOSET. D8< *chu-CHIRP chu-CHIRP!!*

Brain cells are failing me, I'm going to bed now..


TL;DR version: Been busy. Got sick geckos, they didn't make it. Have a newborn baby gecko, went to the ocean, feeling much better now. Waiting for crested gecko eggs to hatch any day now. Fourth of July was entertaining. Check out my latest crestie photos! :3



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