DESERET NEWS: November 16, 1994
The day my 12-year-old daughter brought home two lizards, I thought we had finally acquired the perfect pets.
Lizards don't bark, chirp, or run around in an exercise wheel all night. They never bite, scratch, or drool. They don't beg to go out ten times a day, walk on the kitchen table, shed fur or feathers, chew up brand new shoes, or drink out of the toilet.
They don't even stink, as long as you clean their terrarium every so often. That's probably their biggest selling point. So what if those belly-dragging, dry-skinned cousins to a snake are less than cuddly? They're practically maintenance free. Just turn on the heating stone, fill their water bowl, and dump in a dollar's worth of crickets once a week.
Those crickets, however, are somewhat of a problem. First of all, people give you weird looks when you walk out of a pet store with a transparent bag full of six-legged crawlies.
"Ya see that dame over there with the sack of cockroaches? She must be carrying one heck of a grudge. Probably gonna sabotage some fast-food joint, or maybe the whole mall."
Second, because Bill and Trudy, as our two reptilian friends prefer to be called, do not clean their plates at mealtime, there are always leftovers--survivors might be a better word. These surviving crickets, members of a strange breed not normally found outdoors in the bushes, hide under rocks or burrow into the sand of the cage where they play dead until the middle of the night, 2 a.m. being their designated wake-up-and-prepare-for-the-concert time. After an initial tune-up session, they rub their squeaky violin string legs together for at least six hours straight. The fact that they only know one note is enough to make the awakened sleeper beg for Chinese water torture.
Third, if the lizards don't eat Jimmy Cricket and his pals in a very short time, those crickets begin to eat each other, which means I have to run to the mall in the middle of the week to get another dozen bugs.
Add that up--a dollar's worth of crickets twice a week for fifty-two weeks! One hundred four bucks a year for lizard food seems a mighty hefty sum when you consider the lack of gratitude Bill and Trudy show. They don't even wag their tails.
Fourth, in some unknown way, some of the crickets always escape. How those bugs get out, I can't begin to imagine. The fact is, they do. I know this for a fact, because I occasionally find them hunkered down in places I don't care to think about, including my underwear drawer and the slippers I slide my bare feet into every morning.
"I keep worrying that the escapees will decide to start a family and overrun my house," I say to the pet supply owner who sells them.
"No chance of that," the man tries to set me straigt. “They can't reproduce because they're all the same sex."
This little bit of knowledge not only reassures me, it sparks my curiosity. "So are they girls or boys?"
"Quite frankly, I don't know," he drawls. "Girls one week. Maybe boys the next!"
If the lizards don’t eat Jiminy Cricket and his pals in a short time, those crickets begin to eat each other!
