Bob is ALIVE!!

 I know you were just as worried as we were - Bob was not coming out of that hide, and to be honest with you, I truly believed he'd crawled up into it and was dead - couldn't get out, starved and died. I expected to start smelling him, but that never happened. Then, one day, about three days after he climbed into an impossibly tight spot inside a resin hide, Laura found a piece of fresh poop in his enclosure!!  That was a sign of life!!

    You can't know how excited we got when we saw the poop. Yes, it's true; we did the dance right there! Thankful that he was alive, she put more crickets into his enclosure, hoping he'd hear them and come out. He decided to wait until night time to do so, but in the morning, there were no crickets, and yes, another poop! Woo! The dance was done once more.

    About  3:00 p.m. for no reason whatsoever, Bob decided to exit his hide - ha! Got him! Once he popped his head and shoulder out of it, Laura slowly opened the enclosure lid, drawing it back so she could reach into the tank. She held the hide at a tilt so he couldn't crawl back up it. Shaking the hide a little and gently pulling him behind his arms, she dragged his little Leopard gecko body out, and we threw away that particular hide.  NO MORE DANGEROUS SCARY HIDES for us.

    Bob is in a 20-gallon tank with two open and airy dark hides, long vines to climb on, a nice basking rock, and a big round drinking bowl he can sit on and drink if he wants to. His hide is covered in foliage; he also has Spanish moss to hide in. The gecko should really be happy as a clam —if that's possible. He should be thankful and grateful that he has two women who love him to bits and want him to be as comfortable and spoiled as a gecko can possibly be in captivity.

    I have four lizards: a gecko, a Beardie, a Schneider's skink, and a Blue-Tongue skink. The larger lizards are safely hidden when they want to be, but they come out to bask and stare at me. Aodhan, the Bearded Dragon, is my coworker. She'll come out the entire day and stare at me, tilting her head, thinking I'm the strangest of all creatures she's ever seen. She hasn't let me pick her up yet, but we have long conversations, and I do pet her a lot.

    Avalon, the Schneider skink, will come out once or twice a day, and sit on my head or do the human treadmill routine as I hold her, switching hands as she runs. She enjoys that. Cion, the Blue-Tongued skink, wishes me dead, but I don't allow her desires to upset me in the least. I tell her every day how pretty she is, and I pet her tail when she's hiding, constantly hissing at me. When I leave, she wonders where I went. Strange thing.

    Bob...the gecko, is so aloof right now. He was either abused at his first home, or maybe he never had a home, and just doesn't realize how people act -- he's in the learning phase. He doesn't understand that we talk to lizards, cats, dogs, walls, chairs, anything really -- we talk. He's not a fan of the sunlight, that's for sure, so after dark, I come in and talk with him just before going to bed -- maybe some day he'll figure out that we're only here to love him. He's about 4 months old now, but when he gets older, he'll be more comfortable - hopefully.

This is what he will look like as an adult. Photo Credit: UrbanZoo.com