Clarification
Last night I received a comment on one of my previous posts, "Casa de Chester," from Jessie. Just to clarify, Chester is our frog, the one in the pictures getting fed. Chester is not, as my beloved high school pet ChiChi was, a tarantula. I have to clear something up with this story as well...because ChiChi did not die from a fall...she was poisoned!!!
I got ChiChi shortly after I got my drivers license. I desperately wanted a pet at that time. Cats were not allowed because my family had been devastated by the loss of our beloved cross-eyed cat Steve four years earlier. Any rodents or snakes were also out since my mom is terrified of both. So I happened to stop by the pet store in New Iberia one day and there she was...a beautiful Chilean rose-haired tarantula. (see above) I think Meyer was with me at the time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, ChiChi ate only live crickets which had to be purchased at the pet store. This was sort of chore but she was really cool so I didn't mind. I'm sure my mom remembers this differently. She molted once which was really neat, and she once laid an egg sack. We worried for a week or so that our house was going to be inundated with hundreds of baby tarantulas but probably due to the lack of a male tarantula, that never happened. Unfortunately, after I had ChiChi for a couple of years, my family went on vacation. For some reason, I asked Andy's family to take care of ChiChi while we were out of town. Upon our return, ChiChi was dead.
There was no necroscopy so I can't be sure of her exact cause of death. The average life span is over 15 years so natural causes can definitely be ruled out. I found out that instead of going to a pet store or bait shop to get crickets, Andy's mom had been catching crickets in their backyard and feeding them to ChiChi. I can only conclude that ChiChi was either fed a species of cricket to which she was allergic, or that the pesticides and chemicals in the wild crickets killed her! Or maybe, the truth is now being revealed....since Jessie heard a story that involved ChiChi dying from a small fall, maybe someone in Andy's family dropped her, confessed the story to Jessie's source, and I am only finding out the truth just now!
Hm...if anyone knows anything more about this..please leave your information in the comments.
Labels: pets
You Can't Graph Happiness
Saturday night we went to Cassie and Martin's for games and the conversation somehow got around to finances. I am really anal about keeping track of my cheking account (I know, shocking) so I still balance my checkbook, recording every transaction in Quicken on my computer. Martin was saying that he does the same thing and then creates a graph of the different categories of expenses. I'm afraid to do this because I think it would be shocking how much we spend on "dining and entertainment." Anyway, Martin commented that the "pets" portion of their graph has gotten bigger and bigger due to Cassie's recent foray into the world of aquariums to which Cassie responded "you can't graph happiness."
I tried to remind my self of this yesterday as I entered the receipts for Chester's new terrarium, substrate, water bowl, climbing log, and plant into Quicken. For a $5 frog, he certainly has a nice home. When I told Andy that I thought it may be a little over the top he responded by saying "no, it's just like the exhibits they have at the zoo" uh, yeah...exactly.
After we put the new terrarium up yesterday morning and introduced Chester to his new home we spent about an hour watching him climb around. The cage is 18 inches high and he repeatedly climbed to the top and then with no where left to go would just fall back down to the ground. Either he really likes the new place and climbing around or he hates it and has been trying to commit frog suicide since yesterday morning. Either way, he was a lot of fun to watch.
Labels: chester, pets
New Addition!
Last night I told Andy to text me when he was leaving school and I would leave work at the same time. Well 5:30 rolled around and he still hadn't texted so I left work...I called him on the way out and he sounded super-chipper and even offered to cook dinner. Karin was walking with me to get coffee and I mentioned that he sound awfully happy for being at work until 5:30. So I got home and he came in about 20 minutes after me with a surprise!! A new pet..a fire-bellied toad. I had been talking for a while about wanting a frog so he went to Petco and picked one up for me. He is super-cute. I'm just assuming that it's a he. We haven't settled on a name yet, waiting to get a feel for his personality. I immediately called him Chester and Andy has been calling him Roscoe or Coe for short. He also threw T-Bone out there but I vetoed that one. Suggestions are welcome. Here are some pictures of Chester/Roscoe. And we are going to pick one name...we aren't going to combine them like when Andy and his sister couldn't decide what to name the bird so they just called him Scooterbingo. Anyway...enjoy the pictures of our new family member! I'm still trying to figure out how we're going to get him in the Christmas card.
Labels: chester, pets
