Thursday 8th May 2008
This morning was madness. I was up at six to do morning routine as I had Martin and Gaz coming at eight with my new vivs. We never got in until three and have had so little sleep in the last couple of days that I’m feeling pretty spaced out. Gaz is The Reptile Emporium driver and Martin is the owner. TRE is one of the best reptile shops I have seen. The sheer size of it is beyond impressive and the vast choice of reptiles and amphibians on display are second to none outside of a zoo environment. However what I like about the place is the high standard of husbandry. There are literally hundreds of reptiles in that shop, including water animals such as Caimen. Anything like terrapins that live predominantly in water and eat live food and protein tend to smell if you aren’t meticulous about their care. Hell, reptiles in general hum if you don’t clean them daily. There is no smell when you walk into that place. Apart from Martin and Daz the staff are all very young. What the youngsters lack in knowledge they make up for in enthusiasm and they are polite and always make people feel welcome. Daz, and Martin in particular know reptiles inside out and back to front.
For this reason I wanted to make a good impression. If Martin can keep hundreds of animals nice I damned well wanted to make sure that my twenty-four reptiles, one rat and one dog got the thumbs up. Daz has been to my home loads of times but Martin had never been before.
Because I respect the man I asked him if there’s anything at all that he didn’t like the look of, anything that he would suggest that I do differently. He said that my displays are outstanding and that all my animals look well, (except for the new baby leos who he said were at death’s door and in terrible condition and what the hell did I buy them for) high praise indeed. Then he went on to say that he personally wouldn’t use the modern compact UV’s in the bigger vivs and that he’d stick with the old-fashioned strip light ultra violet. He had a good look at all the animals and then retracted his comments. He said that not one of them was showing any sign of MBD (metabolic bone disease) at all and after having them for twelve months the beardies at least would be showing some symptoms by now if their UV wasn’t up to scratch. I said that although the UV only works within a three foot radius and I was using them in six foot vivs the animals are never still and are all over the viv so each one gets plenty of time in the relevant half of the viv. After discussing it for a few minutes his opinion was that if it isn’t broken don’t fix it.
I told him that I had a puzzle for him and showed him the new lizard. I explained to him that he’d been sold as a Vietnamese blood-sucking dragon but that I’d never heard of the name, though I had seen these lizards before many years ago. He peered into the viv finally located the little dot of a thing sticking firmly to one of the plants and without hesitation he said, “Oh, that’s a garden fence lizard.”
“Oh,” well that didn’t sound nearly so impressive as a Vietnamese blood sucking dragon. “Nope, I don’t think that’s right, that doesn’t sound familiar either and I know I’ve had these before.”
“It is Jane, it’s a garden fence lizard. They are native to most of the Americas and Asia. They are also known as changeable lizards.”
“That’s the one.” As soon as he said the name I recognised it and remembered why they are called changeable lizards. When they become distressed they accelerate the blood flow throughout their body and as the blood vessels over fill their normally golden skin become bright red. Martin said that’s why they are also sometimes called blood suckers. So all three names are used for these cute little lizards, but Martin maintains that garden fence lizard is their most common name.
When I picked this little guy up yesterday he looked awful, he was a dull beige brown colour with very little distinguishing feature at all. He was in such poor condition that he wasn’t even able to colour change. After just a few hours under UV lighting and with the correct heat and humidity, he’d really come into his own. His skin was the colour of set honey and had turned the most beautiful golden colour. The markings under his eyes had become prominent and if anybody can remember the headband that the boy wore in the Karate Kid film with the sunburst design, well that’s the pattern that this little fella has around his eyes. With four of us peering into the viv at him he huffed himself up a bit and looked very nervous and then bang on cue as we watched we saw him turn from gold to red in the space of about three seconds, it was remarkable. We left him to calm down.
I showed Martin the two little leos close up. He pulled a face. “Kindest thing you could do for them Jane is put them out of their misery. They’re going to come to nothing.” That didn’t inspire confidence.
I’ve now got two of three new vivs. He didn’t have the third one in stock in beech and I have to wait until its been built. But they’ve allowed me to have a good shuffle. Isa and Gawler, the bearded dragons, have gone into one of the new four footers and Roma, the blue tongued skink, is in the other one. This means that the two iggies have the monster viv to themselves which is a bit over kill and if need be I can separate the two sections and utilise the lower half. The Changeable lizard doesn’t need four foot but he’s coming to no harm in there for now and when he comes out of quarantine it’s going to need a massive deep clean anyway so he might as well stay in there until he’s done.
Naming the new guys caused mass dissention within the ranks. The lads want to do away with the tradition of naming them after towns in their country of origin but, with the exception of Frog, who just has to be individual in all things, they are all named this way and I wouldn’t give. I do admit though it’s getting increasingly difficult to find suitable names. Leopard geckos originate from India and we finally settled on Akora for the normal that is quite dark in colour and looks as though he might develop male genitalia. The little albino we have named Neako.
Because the changeable covers such a wide range of natural habitat we decided to stick with Vietnam and have called him Tonkin. He weighs in at a reasonable eighteen grams and I have high hopes that he’s going to do well.
Oh boy oh boy, spend in haste and repent at leisure. I spent a fortune yesterday I converted my Turkish lira and spent that and wiped myself out. This wasn’t a problem because I knew that I had two hundred and eighty pounds sitting in my Post Office account. I still get tax credits for Marty and these get paid straight into that account. The smile soon melted from my face when I said I’d clear whatever was in the account only to find that it was empty. My “but, but but,” didn’t make the expected money magically appear and I had no choice but to leave empty handed and go home to ring the tax office.
On the day Marty turned sixteen I received a boat load of forms to fill in and was told that as he was still at school I could get a run on of my tax credits until the end of August. I’d been working on that for my budget. The holiday and then finishing off my spending money on lizards had cleared me. Having no money to come back to dropped me right in it.
Apparently, yes I am entitled to a run on because Marty is still at school…however as the tax credits are means tested, and as we have just entered a new tax year, and as, therefore, they have worked out who got what in the last tax year… I earn too much for any tax credits and tough talludas baby. Last year I earned just sixteen grand, hardly top bracket income, is it? I’m a shop manager and my fella works a production line in a soap powder factory. His job is no less valid than mine, people need clean clothes as much as they need sex, and let’s face it, without the first they aren’t going to get the second, but I have more responsibility than he does. He came out with twenty-six grand and worked far fewer hours than me.
My salary equates to just seven pounds an hour, because I spent half of last year working part time and then took over as manager in June it means that I only earned sixteen thousand pounds. As soon as my money increased I phoned the tax office and told them that I was now working sixty-six hours a week. I’ve been prosecuted for fraud before when I didn’t declare earnings on income support. I don’t ever want to be in that position again so I did everything honestly and right by the book this time.
They continued to pay me the same rate of tax credits because it runs year to year or something and all was cushty.
In April we began the new tax year and they did their maths and decided that I’d been paid for the entire year on my part time salary. Not my fault. I informed them and they agreed that I did everything correctly ... but now, not only am I no longer eligible for any tax credits towards my son’s care … but…
I owe them nearly six thousand pounds that they recon they’ve overpaid me. They stressed that I hadn’t done anything wrong but we’ve merely hit tally up and make adjustments time and I now have to pay back six months tax awards that they gave me and I received in all good faith… bugger! How can that be right? I paid five thousand pounds last year in tax and Lord knows how much in national insurance. Now, not only am I ninety two pounds a week down, which I knew was coming, but, I’ve lost it four months earlier than they told me I would and I have to pay six grand in overpayment. No point weeping and wailing that it’s not fair, I’ve had that money and spent it, now it’s pay back time. Things are going to be pretty tight from now on and the animals cost me a fortune.
Benji has settled in well. He’s still a bit quiet for my liking but he’s losing the frightened hang-rat look when you go near his tank.
Tia came in yesterday and we told her that we have a pet rat. Initially she wasn’t pleased. “Well you’ll have to get rid of it. I don’t like rats. You know I don’t like rats daddy.”
“But babe, you’ll like Benji. Beji’s lovely sweetheart.”
“I don’t like rats.”
I decided that madam was being just a little bit too petulant and decided to step in without the ‘babe and ‘sweetheart’ sweeteners.
“How do you know you don’t like Benji? You haven’t even seen him yet.”
“I don’t like rats.”
Russ brought Benji in, “Ugh, ugh, it’s got red eyes, it looks evil, get it out. I don’t like rats.”
“Well that’s a shame because we are getting a pair of baby females too and I thought you might like to name them and have one here as your own ... but as you don’t like them…”
As much as she didn’t like him, Benji has no such prejudice and decided that he liked Tia very much and ran onto her knee. To give Tia her due she’s not a pathetic, scream and run away, kind of girl, she’d just been influenced by her mother’s view of rats and what she’d heard about them. When Benji ran onto her and looked up with his nose twitching she giggled and five minutes later they were best mates. She’s decided that she’s going to call the new girls Lili and Ruby ... oh well.
“There,” I said pointedly, looking at Russ, “That’s how easy it is to overcome a preconceived idea.” I know for a fact that if Russ stopped molly-coddling her because he’s terrified of what his ex-wife’s going to say after he promised her that we wouldn’t have any snakes, and told her about Stoker, Tia would soon come around to the idea and accept it.
