Wednesday 7th May 2008
I slept the entire journey back in the taxi. Tom got us home without causing a major pile-up on the M6 and we gave him a tenner tip for his trouble, which put a smile on his toothless old mush. I didn’t think my neck would ever forgive me for sleeping in an awkward position and I resigned myself to the fact that I might ever after view the world from a right-sided tilt.
I was disappointed on walking into the living room to find it empty. I had expected Marty to be zonked out on the sofa figuring that he’d have done his best to stay awake for us coming in but we had the room to ourselves. It was a far cry from coming back from Prague last year to find Mac, the lodger from hell, dossed out on the sofa bed and the telly blaring. All I’d wanted then was a milky coffee, a sit down and a fag but we’d had to tiptoe through the room and go straight up to our room where we’d been exiled for three months since the day Mac had moved in ‘just or a couple of nights’.
I instantly went to the vivs to peer into the darkness and make a tentative head count. Shanghai, one of the Chinese water dragons, lifted her head sleepily. Oh well, I reasoned, at the very least I still had one lizard left out of twenty-three.
I heard the familiar pitter patter of feet on the stairs and Kali (the dog) came bounding up to us. She cried when she saw us, now that was more like it. Russ took her out.
It was almost seven o’clock, Marty would have to be up soon for school anyway. I wanted to know what had been happening but also I’d really missed him and needed to see that he was okay. It couldn’t wait and I had to go and get him out of bed. I knocked on his door and went in. “Marty, Mart, you awake?”
“Ugh?”
“Wake up, we’re home.”
“Oh hiya.”
Well it wasn’t exactly fanfares and tambourines but I suppose it would have to do. I told him that I was putting the kettle on and to come down.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, what’s been happening? How are you? How are the animals? How’s Nicki?” I was so proud of myself that I asked about Marty’s well being before enquiring about the animals. It’s not that I care any less about Marty, but he was standing in front of me by this point, sleep distressed and dishevelled but I could see that he was hale and hearty and hadn’t perished in the deprival of my pandering.
“Fine.”
What is it with teenagers that they think the single syllable ‘fine’ is a coverall for any maternal inquisitioning.
Not content with rousing my son from his festering pit, I boosted the national grid by turning on all the vivs. Gradually animals came awake and looked at me bleary eyed. None of them whooped and hollered in excitement because Mum was home; they’d all missed me then. Now I began a head count in earnest.
“It’s okay, they’re all there, you don’t have to count them.” Marty seemed generally put out by this.
“What, all alive, all well?”
He looked sheepish.
“Oh God, what’s happened?”
“Don’t go mad, but Corona had her eggs and I was at school and I never got them out in time. They dried up. Don’t suppose I get my hundred pounds now do I?”
Well if that’s the worst that had happened, I recon we got off lightly. I told him that it didn’t matter and paid up with good grace. We hadn’t been able to spend our money in Turkey and I had come home with loads.
Everybody was absolutely fine. Apart from losing thirteen collard eggs we hadn’t had a single casualty.
Nicki had left, which I was pleased about; it meant that our bed was free. It seemed that they’d got on reasonably well which was much better than expected. The worst-case scenario was that they’d have a big fight two days in and Nicki would storm off in a huff and never speak to me again causing a huge family rift.
“Mum,” said Marty solemnly, “After living with Nicki for a week I will never take you for granted again. I so understand what you mean about having to pick up after me all the time. Nix is sooo untidy. I was trying to keep the house nice for you coming back and she just left things all over the floor, take away wrappers, make-up, straighteners. I’m going to be more considerate from now on.”
Has anything changed … has it hell!
After Marty shipped off to school I wanted to get stuck into morning routine but Russ tried to convince me that the animals would be fine for a few hours while we got some sleep. I told him that I couldn’t go to bed until after ten anyway because I had to ring Mindy the minute she opened to find out how Shilma had got on.
I braced myself for bad news when she answered the phone and it certainly wasn’t good, but Shilma was still with us and hadn’t died while we’d been away. Mindy said that he had good days and not so good days. She’d been regurgitating quite a bit and couldn’t keep wax worms down at all. Minday said that she was still active and alert, which she has been all along, but that she was having to force-feed and was trying to get two mice pinks a day down her just to keep her alive. We agreed that it would probably set her back to be moved and have to travel again and that Mindy would keep her for a few more days. It wasn’t brilliant news but it was far better than I’d been expecting. I just wanted Shilma home, but it wouldn’t have been good for her to move her while she was having trouble keeping food down.
Finally we got into the wonderful softness of our own bed. I hadn’t even changed it after Nicki had been sleeping in it, it all seemed like way too much effort. I wish I had taken the trouble to change the bed, but I didn’t. We lay there talking and realised after half an hour that neither of us was tired any longer. I was excited about going to pick up the new rats and I desperately wanted to clean the house and spend time with the animals.
Forty minutes after going to bed, we got up again. I had the bath that I’d been dreaming about all week but far from it being a long soak, I was in and out because I had so much to do.
On arriving at Pets at Home we made straight for the rats cage at the back of the shop. An assistant looked at us sheepishly and went off to get the manager. Beano was there but Bobby was not in the tank. The manager came over and explained to us that Bobby had died while we were away. I felt really upset and was very worried about taking Beano under those circumstances. What if he died too? What if he pined to death with the loss of his mate? But, he needed us even more now, we’d jut have to get him a new cagemate. The shop didn’t have any other rats in for sale, not even babies that we could grow on before putting in with him.
We ordered a taxi and high tailed it over to a new pet shop that has just opened on Bisland. Russ couldn’t understand why it couldn’t wait until we’d got the existing rat home and settled, but I had to have a mate for him because I couldn’t bear the thought of him being unhappy over Bobby’s death. Beano had been curled up to Bobby’s dead body when the staff came in that morning. It must have been horrible for him. I was just so glad that we hadn’t taken the rats home before we went on holiday because I’d have felt so responsible.
Luckily for us, we had a very understanding taxi driver who agreed to wait outside the pet shop and baby-sit our new rat while we went on our mercy mission. The meter was running and I promised to be quick.
I am going to try and describe that pet shop but even with my exaggeration I don’t think I could do it justice. I have never seen anything like it. We walked in and the second we opened the door the smell hit us. The waft of filthy rats was overwhelming and almost knocked us backwards. Rats should never smell. If they are well cared for there is no reason at all for them to be dirty. All you should be able to smell in or around their cage is fresh substrate. Adult males do have a distinctive body odour, but it’s primarily substrate based and isn’t unpleasant and in no way smells like faeces or urine and you can only smell them when you’ve got your nose pushed into the pelt.
This place was disgusting. It was a tiny pokey, undecorated hole. The left side of the shop had its floor space taken up with a mis-mash of rat cages. They were over populated with a glut of inter-bred Dutch hoods. I could tell that they’d been in-bred because they were stunted and only came in chocolate brown and white. Fresh bloodlines would have produced a variety of colours. The tanks were filthy with old sloppy crap all over the climbing platforms. I’ve been a zookeeper and smelt rhino shit at close quarters, believe me, I’m not unaccustomed to strong odours but this was just dirty, nasty.
The other side of the shop had the pathetic display of ‘exotics’ All she had in apart from the rats was a couple of hatchling corn snakes, three lizards and a toad. Not one of them had any heating or lighting. They were kept in tiny plastic hamster cages and they were in terrible condition.
I know the woman behind the counter. We’ve talked before and I was amazed when she told me that he was opening a reptile shop because her basic herpetological knowledge is virtually non-existent … this was born out by the way she was keeping the animals in her shop. I looked around in horror then asked her about rats. She had no adults available; all the rats on display were her pets. Of course she didn’t mean pets exactly: she meant breeding farm. She did have two female babies for sale. They had been born a week earlier and the mother had only had a litter of two.
This is not possible. I have had thousands of rats, literally. I used to keep four hundred at a time and breed for the pet trade also. The difference was that my animals were well cared for. In all my years of rat keeping I don’t remember a single litter where only twins were delivered. She’d either fed the rest of them live to her corn snakes, or the mother had been so hungry and neglected that she’d eaten the rest. The first case scenario is more likely because if she’d eaten them she’d have taken the lot. I told her that I’d take them both as soon as they were weaned. I didn’t want two rats. I didn’t want female rats, I didn’t want baby rats, I just wanted a mate for Beano but more importantly, I did want to get them out of there and give them a good home. I paid for them in advance.
In one of the hamster cages she had small tropical lizard. I couldn’t place the species but I knew that I’d had them through the sanctuary. I asked what it was and she told me it was a Vietnamese bloodsucking dragon. I’d never heard of it. I asked her why she didn’t have it under UV lighting. “Well I’ve only been open a couple of weeks and haven’t been able to get it one yet. I’ve got one on my order this week.” The poor thing would be lucky if it lasted a week.
On a whim I said to her, “I’ll give you seventy quid for every lizard in the shop.” In fairness that was only three, two emaciated leopard geckos, and the unidentified lizard. We settled on ninety pounds for the three. I paid up. I hardly dared look at Russ but when I did he was nodding in agreement. Six months ago he’d have been horrified. I was so proud of him. Chancing my luck I said to him, “Can I take the snakes as well?” Unfortunately he was having none of that. I told her I’d pick up my lizards just as soon as I’d sorted out a suitable and correct environment for them. With a count of just five I’d liberated half of the stock in her shop and left her with her motley collection of rats, two corn hatchlings and one toad.
When we got back home, Col, Sandy and the kids had arrived. I told them they’d have to wait for presents while I sorted Beano out. He was now called Benji, but he gets, Ben, Benjamin and Benji-bob-big-balls. He seemed to be okay but was very subdued. Normally rats in a new environment are all twitching whiskers and curiosity. He seemed to be a bit out of it and after getting him settled into his new home I just left him to it. With Bobby’s sudden death I’m concerned that we may lose him too. He’s an old rat and is very obese.
I told Col about the horrendous woman in her horrendous shop. “Come on mam, let’s go and pick those lizards up now.”
“I can’t son, I’ve got nowhere to put them.”
“Course you have, they can all go in faunariums until your new vivs come.” A faunarium is plastic contraption usually used as a reptile nursery. I have three twenty four by twelve inch faunariums.
“I can’t keep them in there, especially the little tropical.”
“What’s he in at the moment?”
“An eight inch by ten inch hamster box with no heating or lighting.”
“There you go then, even without a UV he’s going to be on a heat mat and be a hundred percent better off than he was.”
It’s funny how co-incidences come about. As we were talking about it the phone rang. It was Martin, my supplier, to say that he’d be through at eight o’clock the next morning with my new vivs. That decided it then.
I set up the three faunaria and left them to reach the correct heat and Col took me there and then and we picked up the three new lizards.
Despite the way it had been looked after the whatever-it-was lizard looked to be in reasonable nick. It had plenty of muscle tone and bloody surprisingly didn’t show any signs at all of metabolic bone disease. The little leos hadn’t fared as well in that place. If they survived I’d got a fantastic deal on them, but if was the key word of the day. They were in terrible condition, far worse than I’d thought while we were in the shop but if they made it they would make spectacular breeding stock to go with Shilma and kashmir eventually. I had a normal, which has a book price of between twenty and forty pounds but I also had a very nice looking albino which in prime adult condition would easily fetch eighty-five pounds.
However these were two sick little lizards. The normal was a lot bigger and healthier than the tiny albino, she was in a terrible state. I weighed them. At birth a leo should weigh between about seven to nine grams. These two were roughly six weeks old looking at them and the normal weighed in at twelve grams. This wasn’t too bad and I had high hopes of pulling that one back. The albino weighed just five grams, two grams less than its lowest birth weight. She was so thin that she could barely support herself. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for her.
I went on to the net to try and find out more about the mystery of the new lizard. I was so frustrated because I remember having these little guys before but I just couldn’t put a name to them. I typed in Vietnamese blood sucking dragon and yielded no results. In general agamids nothing came up. After half an hour my search was fruitless. But Martin was coming tomorrow and he might have some idea what the mystery lizard might be. In the end I didn’t put him in a faunarium I wanted to get him under UV immediately and although it was absolutely massive for one little five inch lizard, I put him in one of the four foot vivs where he’d have all the heating and UV that he needed. He could probably have bunked in with the collards under other circumstances but because of his start in life my three new guys were all under strict quarantine.
I’d agreed to have Tia over for tea. Russ hadn’t seen her for a week and of course he wanted to give her her gifts. I’d already cooked for the kids and the exhaustion was creping back in. Russ asked me if I could put on a bit of a birthday paty for Tia.
“Eh, her birthday was in January.”
Russ laughed. “No, not for her, for me. Tia likes me to have a tea party when it’s my birthday.”
For the next hour I was in a right old stew. I found a frozen gateaux and cheesecake in the freezer, made some butties, bought some crisps and fancies and botched up pretty acceptable of the cuff birthday party. I was annoyed that Russ had sprung that on me, but it was nice to see Tia.
She arrived with a birthday present for me. I couldn’t believe it when she’d bought almost the same present for me that Russ had. I picked my butterfly necklace, Russ had absolutely no input in my buying it other than to say that it was nice along with twenty others that he also liked. I picked it, he paid for it and yet it was almost the same as the one his daughter had bought me on the same day at roughly the same time. The butterfly necklace that Tia bought me is not encased in a circle and doesn’t have the diamante or enamel, but it is a similar sized butterfly in exactly the same position with spread wings. I think that’s pretty amazing.
We did get a brief sleep that afternoon, but only for two hours. Russ the karaoke monster wanted to go out. I was less than enthusiastic but I did want to try out my new ali-baba pants. I thought they’d look great with their gathered ankles and voluptuous legs. I imagined a slim-line silouette with lots of lose flattering gathers that would look great with high heels. They were bright red and I wanted to wear them with a white top and a wide waist synching belt.
They looked bloody ridiculous. They stopped just below my knees and made me look four sizes larger than I really am. They are hideous and are going to be kept as telly watching jammy bottoms.
When we got to the Gauntlet we had some bad news. Mandy and Danny our friends who run the karaoke are finished, their gear has blown up and they have left indefinitely until they can afford to buy more. The new karaoke was okay and run by a couple that I know a bit from years ago, but it wasn’t the same. Having to pay for our drinks hit hard, we’d been so used to just walking way from the bar with them. We had a good night and I still had half a week of holiday left.
