For those of you who didn't follow my status update on Facebook yesterday... Almonds ate a gecko yesterday morning. For those of you who DID read that news... yes, I'm still shaken up over it.
Here's the story:
I was walking around the house getting things together. (For the life of me, I can't remember exactly what I was doing -- but I know I was doing something!) Almonds started crawling into the kitchen and searching on the floor for something small to grab. Luckily, I thought, the floor is clean of anything small, so I shouldn't have much to worry about. As she started reaching under the oven (like she always does), I turned my back to her to focus on something else (again, it WAS something... something important...) for a minute. Then I stepped over her in the kitchen to pour myself some juice when I noticed she was sitting upright and chewing.
Hmmm, I thought (still recalling that the floor was clean), maybe she's fiddling around with her new teeth.
I drank my juice and left some for her. The juice was part to distract her so I can see what's inside her mouth, in case something really was in there. So I squatted down with my cup of juice; she looked at the cup and began to reach for it, but suddenly stopped her action and proceeded to spit out what was in her mouth. It was a dark greenish brown color, slimy with perfectly circular black spots. What could that be, I thought? I pulled the small lump out of her mouth and tossed it into the trash.
I was right, I thought, that was slimy. Too slimy.
It missed the trash can and landed on the kitchen floor, but I didn't yet pay attention to it. Almonds took the cup and drank the rest of the juice, and while she did that, I crawled over to see where the mysterious slimy thing had landed. I took a good look and gasped.
It was a baby gecko. And it wasn't moving.
I almost cried with disgust. I scooped her up, flushed her mouth out with water, brushed her teeth, prepared her a bottle of formula and had her gulp it down. My mind was racing: Where did she find it? How did she catch it? Why hadn't I seen it? How could I have stopped her? Is she gonna be ok? Is that thing really dead on my kitchen floor? Did she break it into pieces? (No. That answer was obvious: it was still whole.) *shudder* I thought geckos were fast. I thought she would never have picked up a moving creature. What if she'd swallowed it? What if she choked on it?
I flushed my own mouth out with water, and downed a lot more liquid than I had had in a while! Then I tried to call Jobi, who wasn't answering because his phone died (stupid phone). And when I couldn't reach him, Ame and I went to my neighbor Rachel to vent to her.
Almonds, on the other hand, didn't seem affected by it at all. Apparently, something about the "food" was distasteful to her, hence her spitting it out and wanting a drink. But other than that, she was (and still is) alright. I've been monitoring her every minute since then, and she's fine. I think it's just me who isn't fine. I put the news on my Facebook status, and evidently everyone has something to say about it. The ones that hit me the hardest, though, were from my siblings --
"WHAT the HECK?! Can you watch my neice so she doesn't pick up freakin animals and eat them?! HOLY COW, GROSS!! and you were standing by watching, what in the world!"
"...i leave for 3 months and this $£¡¥ is going on, lol. wat the heck? give her a camera not a gecko."
After a long day of dealing with it and other not-so-happy things, and then enduring another consecutive day of unfortunate events, I can't help but take these personally. Eek! I'm only human, people! (Breathe, Dassa. Breathe..........)
Ok, I'm done venting. And that's the end of the story.