How to Feed a Gecko When You Really Hate Crickets

Context #1: Why I Hate Crickets

In the Summer of 2012, there was a drought in Oklahoma. It was so dry that a certain parasite could not survive. Said parasite usually eats many, many cricket eggs in the early summer, but this year, all the crickets hatched in late summer. When I arrived on campus to begin my senior year of college, and on into the fall semester, basically until it got cold enough to freeze, I learned firsthand what a “plague” of insects is like. There were so many of them on the sidewalks that one could not physically avoid crunching them while walking or biking across campus. They swarmed around street lights at night. They somehow came into apartments through air vents. And the smell of their rotting corpses wafted across campus from the mass graves that happened to be created each time exterminators came through with pesticides.

One evening as I was getting ready for bed, I found a cricket on my bed (thank heavens I had made the bed that morning, so it was on top of the covers, not on my actual sheets). I turned away to get a piece of paper and shoe — both necessary for my carefully honed cricket-killing technique, from which I derived a not-so-secret (and somewhat embarrassing) sense of satisfaction — and when I turned back, the cricket was gone. I looked for it to no avail for about 10 minutes. I then sat down on the floor, shoe/paper in hand, and cried. Because I just wanted to go to sleep. But that cricket for sure knew how to get on my bed, and it for sure was still lurking in the room somewhere. By the grace of God, the cricket came out of hiding again, and I was able to nab it as it inched across my floor. Finally I could sleep in peace.

But the Cricket Plague of 2012 has haunted me ever since. In the pattern on the bathroom tile in our last house, one of the smudges of darker brown looked uncannily like a squashed cricket, and I did a momentary double take, with elevated heart rate, every time it came into my peripheral vision. I’m actually scarred for life, y’all.

Context #2: Why We Have a Gecko

When it was time to move from our last city and house to our current one, I was deeply in Purge the Stuff Mode, so I refused to move both Cozy Coupes and both Tricycles. It made more sense to my practical mind to keep the red ones and ditch the pink ones, for more gender-neutral pass-down-ability for our possible future additional children. But the pink ones were directly Miryam’s, and she was the one old enough to notice and care about us getting rid of things. I was prepared to quote my father and matter-of-factly present the truth that “life’s not fair,” knowing she was outgrowing these particular toys anyway and in another few months she would be just fine.

However, Justin had a soft spot for Miryam’s tears on this occasion, and he made her a deal. “If we get rid of the pink ones, we will get a pet after we move.”

I’m sorry, WHAT did you promise her??

We had long ago established that we weren’t going to be a pet family. Some of us are allergic to dogs and cats, Justin hates birds (long story) almost as much as I hate crickets. Anything you have to feed other live animals to was out, from my perspective. Anything that might live 50 years (ie. a tortoise) was too much commitment. We didn’t even know “where we’ll be in five years,” for the first nine years of our marriage, after all.

That pretty much left fish or turtles. Animals in a tank full of water. Okay. Mostly in order to maintain my husband’s word as good for the kids, and partially because Miryam was just such a little animal lover, I chose not to straight up veto this promise.

Sooooo over a year after moving and settling in here, and after the dozenth time Miryam had reminded me about this promise Daddy had made, I encouraged Justin to take the kids to the pet store and find something to bring home. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say, after chatting with the person at the store, they came home with a leopard gecko – supposed to be very low maintenance, easy to clean up after, and willing to be handled by loving children (unlike fish).

Her name is Cookies’n’Cream, and she’s really grown on me over the several months she’s been rooming in with the kids. She truly is a low-maintenance pet. But I was very upfront with Justin: all the maintenance, as little as it may be, was to be his job: getting what was needed for her, cleaning up after her when needed, and feeding the live crickets (!!!!) to her. He agreed. Kids were thrilled. I do get a small (and somewhat embarrassing) sense of satisfaction watching our gecko eat the crickets… So I was complacent. And there you have it, we have a gecko.

Context #3: Why it was My Job to Feed Her Today

Leopard geckos don’t need to eat every day. Only a couple times a week on average. No problem most of the time, Justin takes care of it. But this week, he is out of town. Too many days in a row for Cookies not to eat anything. So I valorously agreed to undertake the task.

Context #4: What Else was Going on Today

Short version: All the kids are sick; I’m injured; Justin is out of town.

Q: Elizabeth, why are you using your precious down time on a day when your husband is out of town and your kids are sick, to write for your blog, which you haven’t prioritized in months?
A: This just felt like a story worth writing. And I had an hour of quiet while TV time and naptime overlapped. And Justin told me I should try to write more again, seeing as I have neither a night-waking infant nor a pregnancy to take care of currently. And the kids were in bed on time, and the words are flowing.

Long version: Justin had some family affairs in Oklahoma to attend to, and weeks ago I helped him choose this as a good week to go attend to them. I somehow caught the nail of my left thumb on something, ripping up a corner, and it is very swollen and painful (“my finger has a heartbeat” style but worse) as it slowly heals, so I’m down to one fully functional hand. Luke had an ear infection last week, so he was already on antibiotics for that. Paschal is teething (the last one of the molars and all but one canine tooth, all at once), so he was fussy anyway.

Today, Miryam woke up with an earache, but no other symptoms, so I made her a doctor’s appointment for later in the morning and sent her on to school with ibuprofen. Cecily said her tummy hurt, which I thought was just because she hadn’t gone potty yet today, but she also said she wanted to stay home from school, which is very unlike her, but she went anyway, without any tears. I brought Luke’s antibiotics up to the school office, since I’d forgotten to administer the morning dose during the morning rush of getting ready for school plus trying to make a doctor appointment, and I checked Miryam out from her class for said appointment. Urgent care doctor confirmed that she had an ear infection, and asked if I wanted her tested for anything else, which I declined, because she wasn’t showing (or mentioning) any other symptoms, and I’d rather just get out of here, thanks. So the doctor didn’t even look in her mouth/throat. (Hold that thought.)

I took Miryam back to school. Paschal, of course, fell asleep on the way back to school, and stayed asleep back to home, and transferred pretty seamlessly to his crib to finish his nap. He woke up earlier than I expected, which turned out to be fortuitous, because before I could even go retrieve him from his crib (after I had waited for several minutes past initial awake sounds, in case he was going to put himself back to sleep), Cecily’s school called and asked me to come pick her up, because at lunch she “took one bite of banana, and burst into tears,” then had been lying on the floor for a while saying her tummy hurt. Oh lovely. Back in the car, with her blankie and doll; grab my girl, who looked terribly pathetic; cozy her up in her car seat; to the pharmacy for Miryam’s prescription that was ready now; and Paschal fell asleep again in the car. At 11am this is expected, but at 1pm, after a halfway decent nap, it was unexpected. This time he woke up when we got home, but soon he started acting tired again, and I jokingly asked him, “Are you not feeling well, too?” in response to which he enthusiastically nodded his head Yes. Wait, really? I checked his temperature, and he had a slight fever. Within 20 more minutes he’d turned hot and was running a legit fever. I set Cecily up with a popsicle and then TV time, and I set Paschal up with a doctor appointment for the next morning and then his third nap of the day. (He usually only takes one a day!)

I had to wake Paschal when it was time to pick up the big kids from school. I asked Miryam how her ear was. “Worse. And my throat kind of hurts.” Oh. Well, here is your first dose of antibiotics for your ear, right here in the car, because we are going to Sonic or Chick-fil-a (y’all’s choice) for early, easy, Daddy-is-not-here dinner. Or, last minute idea, we could run into Kroger and pick out Lunchables real quick. Lunchables win. Grocery store pit stop. Surprisingly cooperative children there, and honestly the unloading and walking and reloading involved with Kroger still took less time than waiting at Sonic would have, directly after school as it was. Okay we’re good.

At home, Lunchables were merrily consumed. Well, mostly. Cecily and Paschal both stopped halfway into theirs. Miryam finished hers, because she was determined to get to the included gummy worms, but afterward admitted that her throat was really hurting, and that she was cold. Cecily said her throat hurt, too. Luke said his throat hurt, too. Oh, snap, get the thermometer and the flashlight. Cecily has a fever, Miraym has a slight one, and the girls’ throats looked like early Hand Foot and Mouth (HFMD) to me – definitely something wrong, but definitely not like strep – but Miryam is a bit “too old” to get HFMD. Luke’s temp was normal, and his throat looked just fine. I tried to look at Paschal’s, but I don’t keep tongue depressors on hand, so that was futile. I’ll go ahead and give you the doctor’s assessment from the following day, just so you know, because we’re almost to the Gecko Feeding part of the story, and I don’t really want to go back to the Sick Kids part afterward, because it will be too anticlimactic. But this part feels unfinished, and you might be curious, so anyway:

Since the girls could not go to school, they accompanied me to Paschal’s appointment, which I’d made only in case of an ear infection, upon onset of fever. I was extra glad I’d already made it when the sore throats emerged, because it was with the pediatrician, not an urgent care, and I just generally trust the specialized kids’ doctor to know what’s weird with kids more. Paschal did have “the beginnings” of an ear infection, but with her tongue depressor, and her non-fussy willingness to peek at the girls throats since we were there, the doctor identified “viral herpangina” (terrible name, I know), in all three of them, which is “a cousin” to HFMD, and begins with a fever and a sore throat, and has lately been seen in high volumes “even in older children and adults.” She ran a strep test just in case, but it was negative, as expected. I patted myself on the back for being on the right track to that diagnosis on my own.

I have to take my small wins this week, friends.

And Finally: How I Fed the Gecko

Justin procured enough crickets to sustain Cookies’n’Cream during his absence, before he left, and left them in the garage with some food in the mini cage we use just for this purpose. The pet store girl gave him way more than he asked for, but I guess she is slightly squeamish about the crickets, too, because apparently she only charged him for the 12 he asked for, but let him keep all 30 that jumped into the baggie.

Let’s just pause for a moment to think about these crickets. I cannot believe I’m in a life position to be writing this at all. St. Francis of Assissi, pray for me.

Anyway, after giving everyone the various pain relievers and antibiotics they needed after our dinner, I started gathering what I would need to feed our pet. It turned out that half of the plethora of crickets were dead, and there was cricket poop all over the cage. No way was I putting the gecko into “the feeding cage,” as Justin usually does when there are only 6-12 crickets in there and they’re fresh from the pet store (to make sure we don’t put more than she’s hungry for into her cage and then have to fish them back out afterward). I was going to have to improvise.

I put on a rubber glove. I refused to touch or be touched by crickets with my bare skin. I thought maybe I would just pick them up by the leg, one at a time, and place them into Cookies’ cage, so she could eat them in there. Maybe I was brave enough for this. You’ve got this, you are Super Mom.

Well. No I’m not.

I stuck my hand through the small trapdoor at the top of the cricket cage, and picked up one by the leg, but as soon as it moved at all within my grip, I let it go and screamed, just like I had in 4th grade, when I volunteered to be the one to give the live cricket to my teacher’s pet tarantula for her meal, except instead of dropping that cricket back into a cage, I threw it across the room, and the boys in my class had to catch it and actually give it to the spider.

I should have known myself better than this! (Both times, honestly. Peer pressure is a very strong force, y’all.)

Plan B: Get a cup, trap 1-2 crickets in it, slide the cup along the walls of the cage, use a washcloth to cover the opening of the cup, transfer cup into Cookies’ cage, deposit crickets, wait for her to find and eat them, repeat. This worked fairly well. She got her fill, no crickets escaped; she was happy, I was happy. Well, happy about that task being done, anyway. Paschal had been crying at my feet throughout the process of me psyching myself up for the task, troubleshooting my terrible Plan A, and executing my successful Plan B. It was still 30 minutes till his bedtime, but he was sick, so apparently It Was Bedtime Now, but I had to do what I set out to do when I was in the mental space to do it, or it wouldn’t have gotten done. Perhaps Paschal also wanted the step-stool to have a better view of the pet feeding. He loves watching both gecko and crickets. But I didn’t want to accidentally elbow him in the face while focusing on my task, so he had to stay crying on the floor. Poor baby.

But! I did it! I fed the gecko, even though I really hate crickets.

The End