Spencer is Sam's beloved bearded dragon. He is pretty much the love of Sam's life right now.
Sam loves to take Spencer out of his cage and play with him.
Unfortunately, the other day, as Sam was playing with Spencer, William accidentally stepped on him.
After 5 minutes of Sam bawling his eyes out, he was finally able to tell us what was wrong. He told us that Spencer had been stepped on, and that his back legs were sticking up, and that he heard a crunching sound. (we can all gag now...bleh!) He thought Spencer might be dead.
Ben got the good fortune of going upstairs to inspect. Can you even imagine! I get the shudders just thinking about it.
To everyone's relief, Spencer was alive, however, his legs really didn't look great. We brought his cage downstairs, cleaned it out, gave him fresh food and water, plugged in a new heating lamp, and tried to make him all comfortable.
Fast forward to today.
After keeping a close eye on Spencer these past few days, we decided that Spencer needed to be taken to Petco, so that someone who knows a lot about bearded dragons could tell us what might have been damaged.
Oh, the joys of being the one who is home all day. I get to be the one to take him in. Normally, this wouldn't be a big issue, but there is one small problem.
Spencer hates me. With a passion.
Every time I even look at him, he flares up his nasty beard thing, opens his creepy mouth as wide as he can, sticks out his gooey long tongue full of cricket guts, and hisses at me. It is pretty much a sight straight out of your worst nightmares. Naturally, my boys think it is amazing, and are always asking me to walk by Spencer, so he can freak out at me. Oh, the good points I am racking up in Heaven for this one.
Of course, whenever Sam picks him up, or Luke looks at him, or Ben holds him, he just sits there, perfectly calm. But no, the second I walk in, it's all hisses and flares.
I'm really not sure what I ever did to him, besides pay for him, bring him to a great home with a boy who adores him, clean his nasty cage, remind Sam to feed him, buy his nasty crickets, keep said nasty crickets alive in the stinky cricket house I purchased, feed the nasty crickets to keep them alive in order to feed the creepy lizard, and buy him endless heating light bulbs, because we can't seem to keep them intact for more than a week.
Other than that, I'm not sure why he loathes me. Nevertheless, we pretty much hate each other.
So, imagine my joy in knowing that I had to get him from this...
into this,
in order to get him to Petco, to see how badly he was hurt.
I begged and begged William to do it for me, but he was determined to see "the funny lizard face" that Spencer does when I get near him.
I spent a good part of the morning staring Spencer down, and willing myself to pick him up.
I would stick my face up to the glass of his cage and speak sweet nothings to him. "Hello there Spencer (gulp)! How were your crickets this morning? Are you going to let me pick you up (cringe)? Good Spencer."
He would just do this.
 |
| so creepy! |
At one point, I slowly started moving the lid off the cage, and Spencer slowly slugged his way into his hiding place.
Finally, I mustered up my courage, took a few long sips of ZipFizz to get my adrenaline going, and I stuck my hand in the cage.
Spencer just stared at me.
I slowly grabbed him and picked him up.
Nothing. No hisses, no flaring, no tongue out. Nothing.
I figured he must REALLY be hurt. I slowly lowered him into the little box (with a nice warm towel inside, um yeah, and he hates me?) and sighed a huge sigh of relief.
William, who I hadn't noticed had been watching the whole thing, very loudly moaned "Oh man, I wanted to see him bite off your finger." He then very dramatically shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the box with Spencer in it, and got in the car.
To make a long story a little less long, Spencer is perfectly fine. Yup, that's right, perfectly fine. (insert eye roll here)
He was just in shock and moving slowly.
I brought him back home, and put him back in his cage.
He thanked me with a nasty flare and a hiss.
I just stuck my tongue out at him.
And we are back to normal.
1 comment:
That would scare me to touch it to if it hissed at me. Yuck!
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