“Ralph Snart” Lied To Me

Ralph Snart  lied to me when I was younger. It lied to me about one thing in particular: lizards. Well, maybe lied is too strong a word. At the very least, I definitely felt misled.

There was a character in the comic called Mr. Lizard. He was a talking, hominid lizard with a tendency to drink and spout profanity. I believe he once stated: “Drink up, Ralph. Your sobriety annoys me.” I loved Mr. Lizard when I was an adolescent. I’m even fond of him now.

Mr. Lizard didn’t technically exist in the comic. He was part of Ralph’s rich imaginary world (I think, it got confusing at times). Supposedly, his origins were as a normal lizard purchased from a pet shop. However, Ralph happened to go get crickets for him at an abandoned nuclear facility. When the lizard ate the radioactive crickets, he morphed into the drunken, profanity spouting Mr. Lizard. Ralph’s parents managed to then flush Mr. Lizard down the toilet while Ralph was at school and he somehow rejoined Ralph’s life later.

Regardless, I wanted a chameleon at one point. I ended up with green anoles, also known as an American chameleon. They seemed like kind of an imitation compared to the chameleons I’d been thinking of, but they were still sort of cool. The best part was that they looked like Ralph’s lizard before the change.

Of course, I decided I was going to have fun going out like Ralph and getting them crickets. I didn’t have an abandoned nuclear facility nearby, so I just used a local park. However, my green anoles wouldn’t eat the crickets.

I think it had something to do with the relative sizes between the crickets and the green anoles. Green anoles are pretty small, and most of the crickets I found were pretty big. Regardless, the green anoles just ignored the crickets, letting them wander around the aquarium undisturbed until I got sick of it and took them out. They only ate mealworms, which were horrifically disgusting and traumatizing to have to pick up (live) to give to the green anoles.

As you can imagine, I was displeased.

I blame Ralph Snart. Why not, right? There was no radioactive mutation into a drunken, foul-mouthed buddy who’d get me into troublesome unnecessary situations. I couldn’t even pretend. Damn that Ralph Snart.