House Guests. Non-Human

Ok, I should start this off by saying that we did just have human houseguests this past week. And they were, actually, human. But they vacated the premises this afternoon. This was a new crop of the Traveling Thespians that we have had stay with us in the past. Low maintenance, for the most part, and one of the fellows was Canadian, so that made for a fun bit of joking-about-the-Motherland during the Opening Ceremonies last night

This entry is a brief drive-by of the non-human houseguests that we have for the next week, while the school is on Midwinter Break.

First, we have S'more, coming home for the week. It's like having a kid come home from college, or something. Welcome home, let me do your laundry.

Then, we have Poison and Toxanne, coming for a brief visit. They're staying in Nate's room (and got to share his room with one of the Traveling Thespians, who had displaced Nate during their visit with us, last night. I hope the woman enjoyed the gentle susurrus of the repto-pump, dribbling water into the aquatic half of the tank all night long. Just the thought of that sound makes me need to go potty.

Good golly, Miss Molly, Toxanne is completely dwarfing Poison in the 'who can grow the fastest' competition. And Toxanne is a total Johnny on the Spot when I introduce crickets into their tank, too. GULP! And there's nothing left but an antenna where a plump cricket used to be. I may have to start quarantining Poison, and holding tasty morsels on tweezers for him/her, in order to fatten him/her up.

Nate's teacher is coming over in the middle of the week. Her two sons are completely captivated by the toads, and can't get enough of watching them.

In that vein, I just brought two bags of crickets into the house. There is a bag of small/medium crickets, (on sale at Petco! Woot!) for the toads to eat. They'll go in the Cricket Keeper on the shelf under the toad tank, and hopefully will survive long enough for the toads to eat them over the next 3 days. I also got a bag of 15 LARGE crickets, and I'm hoping to start a bit of a cricket nursery in the garage. Those insects are NOT cheap, and the toads are voracious. So, technically, I guess I should say that the large crickets are houseguests as well, seeing as the toads will not be eating them... at least not right away.

In the "nothing to see here, folks" department, we also brought home the Praying Mantis Pagoda from Nate's class. This is the screen container that houses a Praying Mantis egg case. We have no idea when the little praying mantises (mantii?) will start hatching, so they need to be watched... sign me up! I just hope they don't start hatching tomorrow, because I don't want to have to make an emergency run to Petco to get a vial of flightless fruit flies for the mantises to eat, lest they go all Hannibal the Cannibal on each other.

As I was leaving the school yesterday afternoon (where I got to see Kelly's teacher put in handcuffs and pushed into the back seat of a police squad car... more on that later) I ran into the librarian. She saw me with the praying mantis house, and said "oh, I wonder if Hermie will be fine in the library all week..."

Hermie is the library's Hermit Crab.

He is now living on our kitchen counter. I'll take photos later.

And last, but not least, Kelly was asked by our part-time librarian if she would take care of the librarian's most prized pet (she has a house full of pets, but only one that really pines for people. The rest just need their food and water changed by the neighbour, every other day) while she went on vacation over the break. Of COURSE, Kelly said "YES!" and so she is now sharing her room with Jewel.

Pretty Jewel knows his own name, and can say it if provoked. He also loves having showers.

Kelly spent a good amount of time at Petco this afternoon (when we were supposed to be JUST buying crickets and getting out of Dodge) looking longingly at the birds, and at all the "How to choose and care for your Cockatiel" books.

I told her not to even think about it.

There will be no more Full Time Pets coming into this house until some little fuzzy ones take a trip over the Rainbow Bridge.

Mother has spoken.