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| Gracie........not a big " excitement" personality |
Affable despot and blog pin up Jason, gave me various instructions regarding water spraying, feeding and the like, so I was ready to cope with the responsibility of " looking after Gracie"
Or so I thought.
The water spraying was easy, the sorting out why Gracie's tank was not plugged into the mains was sorted ( I had to ring my sister who is works in a national pet shop to find this one out.....)
But I couldn't quite get the hang of tipping a few miniature live crickets into the tank for Gracie to chomp on.
Miniature crickets are slippery little suckers.
On my first attempt I managed to get just one into the tank
On my second attempt I dropped the cricket container onto the living room floor, scattering the little bastards everywhere....
Have you ever had to round up a dozen or so tiny insects from an average shagpile in someone else's home?
No me neither.
It took an absolute bloody age.
..and this is only day one!
I think I'll stick to baby rabbits
Roland seems to still be doing fairly well btw
Although my pet shop expert sister thinks he may be a her
Roland has therefore been renamed Mary
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| Mary , still going and walking |
Crawling around on shagpile is certainly not cricket.
ReplyDeleteIt wasnt
DeleteYeah for Mary!! And for you!!
ReplyDeleteI think it was your sister who weighed our Daxie the other week when we popped in :-)
ReplyDeleteShe's a friendly soul
DeleteOne thing you should be grateful for, John: Those critters escaped in his house not YOURS. Though you could have put Albert to work.
ReplyDeleteLooking after other people's pets is the devil's own job. Not least when you hate guinea pigs, hamsters and anything else vaguely rodent looking. Your neighbours go on holiday, and you pray that none of their little blighters will die in their absence. Unlike myself, who once nearly died, trying to retrieve an escapee from underneath a hedge. After I got it back I could have killed it. Still, it's not their fault that they are ugly pets beloved by their owners. In fact I fed them finest organic stuff. Swear it expanded their life span. Unfortunately.
Aren't most rabbits female? I thought that's where the saying comes from.
U
I loathe caring for other people's pets. Something ALWAYS goes wrong.
ReplyDeleteExample: http://19chickens.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/pitfalls-of-house-sitting.html
Oh yes! I see.....thanks for that....it's reduced my stress levels nicely x
DeleteLizards now, eh? H.I.s parents looked after a neighbour's tortoise once. Unfortunately, they had a balcony three floors up. You can guess the rest.
ReplyDeleteLovely. Visuals
DeleteWhat a responsibility. Count yourself lucky you are not looking after stick insects. A friends son had some when he was younger, all the babies escaped when they were away on holiday & they found a huge number of them hanging from the ceiling on their return.
ReplyDeleteI cannot abide small insects
DeleteI never told affable despot jason that
Little boys love those reptiles, don't they. My son had them when he was a teenager. Oh how I hated feeding time.
ReplyDeleteWe ar e rescuing my mum tonight who has been farm sitting for two weeks.....hopefully she will still be talking to us when we get there! Fortunately there are no reptiles to be cared for at our house because she would have drawn the line at dealing with escapee crickets! I suspect Jason has wee cricket legs stuck in his shag.
ReplyDeleteI hope not!
DeleteHe'll never ask me again
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Delete... and this is a problem how, John?
DeleteLovely Gracie (and Mary), but poor thing with plastic foliage, why not real!!
ReplyDeleteI hope you got ALL those crickets back from the shag pile :-)
You've got two females on your hands. A fine task for anyone to handle. =D
ReplyDeleteI usually can handle ladies well
DeleteCough cough
Send Albert in to do the recovery work.My cats love chasing the crickets that get into the house...but then they mangle and eat the tasty bits.
ReplyDeleteJane x
Reptiles...ick. So glad Roland/Mary is still going strong. A bit of a miracle there I think.
ReplyDeleteFunniest post!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 12, I was considered responsible in the neighborhood, and was hired to care for a Golden Retriever for a weekend. I forgot all about him until Sunday afternoon. The poor dog was in the garage that whole time. He was sure glad to see me when I finally showed. I was advised to keep quiet about the whole thing. I still feel sad and anxious about it almost four decades later. At least it wasn't hot.
You should feel sad and anxious. At least you know I'll never ask you to take care of the Z-Boys.
DeleteLove,
Janie
Thanks, Janie! I'll take a pill now.
DeleteLove,
Susie
xoxo
What a wonderful experience you are having.
ReplyDeleteDo you think?
DeleteOh, yeah, pet sitting. My daughter had all kinds of pets when she was young, but we both disliked gerbils (she had several hamsters) because they looked creepy. So of course her friends needed her/us to watch their 2 gerbils while the family went on vacation. The day before they returned, one of the gerbils croaked. Thankfully the Mom was a close friend of mine and very pragmatic about things. Her comment was along the lines of, "Oh, well. I didn't like them anyway!" It's a good thing they didn't know Susie and ask her to gerbilsit - they'd probably both have been dead!
ReplyDeleteNancy in Iowa
Having been an animal rescuer for 4o + years we have had every sort of creature but I still cringe at the thought of taking care of a child’s pet every time we are asked.
ReplyDeleteI was asked to feed a friends' fish. Trouble was the keys she gave me were the spare keys to her mother's house !
ReplyDeleteMy neighbour loves feeding my cats. She says she's never had so many friends all wanting her attention !
I liked the name Roland. Mary is a little boring. We used to get crickets in our house in Maryland. Milhous the tabby cat would tear off their legs, killing them, which was fine with me. I just wish he had eaten them, too. I fucking hate crickets.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
Well ok...just for you..I will revert his name back to ROLAND
DeleteJust read this in a pub in the Peak District !!!!!nearly spat my beer over the mother in law ......
ReplyDeleteMy sister gave me a lengthy lecture about making some thick paste out of the gekko food and leaving it in a small container for Gracie ... Is that ok?
DeleteBloody hell!
The responsibility!
You're a brave soul.... my experiences with other people's pets haven't been so good.
ReplyDeleteDo tell
DeleteBeen there, done that and didn't manage to gather up all the crickets despite my best efforts. Wasn't asked to look after the lizard again.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, John. I don't know what I would have done.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand bugs.
Have a good week John. ♥
The bunny was much too cute to be a boy :)
ReplyDeleteI was looking after a neighbour's two rabbits while they were away. In the daytime they were in a run outside, and at night I had to put them in a hutch. The first evening I was carrying one across and it started scratching me - it came as a shock because I thought rabbits were soft and cuddly, and I promptly dropped it. It went under the hedge and I couldn't get it out. After about half an hour, dusk was falling and I was beginning to panic, I left my son there and drove round to another friend's and brought the daughter back (who had rabbits)to see if she could catch it. She couldn't, in fact we couldn't even see it, and eventually had to leave it.
ReplyDeleteAfter a sleepless night, I went round early the next morning and there it was safe and sound on the lawn.
After that I wore thick gardening gloves and long sleeves and all was well....
Oh dear...I have a lot to learn me thinks
Delete