Momentary Discomforts

Today was Jo and my first trip to the vet with Esther.

We were as scared as two new parents could be. She's been doing this weird thing with her left eye where she will sit with the right one open and the left one closed. This also wraps into our other theory that she is partially blind. She has always been very clumsy and it tends to affect her eating habits. For example, we feed her meal worms instead of crickets because she cannot catch a cricket even if her life depended on it. She might catch two out of five/six and then just give up because the other three/four were faster than the first two. As you can probably tell, this is not good for a gecko. If she had belonged to a family who decided to let her go in the wild, she would probably die after a very short amount of time.

The vet was very kind to us. He explained that since reptile eyes are so much different from dogs or cats, it's almost impossible to tell whether or not they are blind. He suggested that, if she's always been this clumsy, then it's possible she could have always been partially blind or just have sight problems since birth. He also explained that lizards have horrible depth perception, which is why she occasionally tries to take a suicide leap when I let her run around on my bed. He weighed her, he measured her, and he checked her eyes and mouth. She became quite peeved with him at one point and opened her mouth very wide, which indicates that she's pissed, and he soon put her back down after that. (She allowed me to pet her for about 5 seconds and then turned away, as if to say, "You're responsible for this as well.") After the short check up, the vet came to a conclusion.

My poor little gecko is suffering from obesity.

We left shortly after that; I was in a bad mood because Jo was doing all he could to torment me. "Megan spoils the little girl," he taunted. "'She looks hungry, Jo. We've got to feed her!'" And, of course, I'm trying to stay away from arguments, so it was all I could do not to explode and say something like, "You fed her too!"

Thankfully, though, that's all that's wrong with her. I'm grateful for this. If she had been impacted or had something horrible such as mouth rot, we would have left with an enormous bill. All we have to worry about it that she gets more exercise and less food. Silly thing.

Also, before I end this blog, I would like to note something silly that I just did. I have been searching for my Bible for the past 3 months, since I started living here. I've looked through boxes and drawers and bookcases but I couldn't seem to find it. 3 months. I was ready to buy a new one, a nice one (which I still might do). Then, today, Jo walked in the front door of my apartment, looked over at the top of my stationary rack, and went, "Uh... Megs..." There sat my Bible, in the one, most obvious place that I had never thought to look. Yay for brunette blond moments!