Primordial Ooze

Many of you may recall that my family purchased a Bearded Dragon for my son’s Birthday in January. We named him Cricket since that’s what he eats. Perhaps I’ll name my next child “Formula” or “Gerber”.  Leave it to Kids to come up with interesting names.

We’ve had him like 7 months now and ion the past month he’s gotten very sick. He’s stopped eating food and has become very week. The pet store people have been giving me advice on getting  his energy up since last summer but Cricket is simply deteriorating.

When we bought Cricket, I was never under the illusion that my kids would care for him. I always considered this my responsibility and not theirs. I simply feel as if they are not old enough. However, I saw this as an opportunity to teach them about responsibility and to have them understand what it takes to care for a living thing. Well, it looks like I demonstrated how not to take care of a living thing since I didn’t do such a good job.

I feel bad. I’m sure there is more I could have done for him to avoid this. Read more, been more diligent in tracking his food intake, perhaps even keeping a Cricket journal.

Well, things are bad now and yesterday we brought Cricket to a vet. The first thing that became clear to me is that pet store owners, while they seem knowledgeable, don’t know jack shit about caring for a sick animal. I think they are good at maintaining healthy animals, but none of their advice came close to the advice I got from the vet. Of course, you say, the vet is a doctor.

Indeed.

So, not I have calcium drops and some liquified hay for herbivores. I need to feed this to Cricket via a syringe. I fed this to him at 6am, my wife will do it around noon, and Ill do it again before he goes to sleep.

I have a follow-up appointment next Wednesday. I am fully determined to get cricket healthy again and have him grow up to be a nice, big, happy Lizard.

If you are still reading this far and if you want to send Cricket a get-well wish, please post a comment to this blog as I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. After all, he’s not talking to me anymore.