Gary the Gecko

Last night Jim undertook some major yard renovations. It entailed removing some half buried railroad ties and hacking away lots of blackberry vines. Carina and Kaden (my youngest two kids) enthusiastically offered to help (the older two looked at Jim like he asked them if they wanted to amputate their right arms - "uh, no, I don't think so, Dad"). During the excavating the kids made two discoveries: first, that excavating is really hard work and they didn't enjoy it as much as they thought they would. Second, they discovered a gecko. Actually, it is probably a salamander or some such creature but they thought it was a gecko and named him Gary the Gecko.

They quickly lost interest in the excavating (after all it is really hard), and worked on building Gary a habitat instead. They filled a toy dump truck with water for his swimming pool, got him leaves to eat, sticks to crawl on and gave him a grand tour of our back yard. "Look, Gary, this is the mud pit you can play in! This is the garden you can eat!" Kaden told everyone that this was the "best evening of my life."

They really wanted to keep him but after much coaxing by their mother, they agreed to return Gary to his rightful home - the blackberry patch on the butte. After they said their goodbyes, Carina walked him up and placed him on the ground, with two leaves as a parting gift. "This is the worst night of my life." said Kaden. "I miss Gary."

Now the pressure is on to find a gecko in a pet store and adopt him. "Can you Google 'gecko' and see what they eat?" "Can you find a pet store that sells geckos?" Anyone know of a cute gecko looking for a home?

Jill