I want a reptile dad, I want, I want, I want!
Sebastian comes home from school and straight away there is noise in the house. They must have covered something about reptiles at school. Or he has seen some on the way home. All I can say is that I now know that he wants a reptile.
Dad! I want, I want, I want a reptile. And without coming up for air he quips that he will look after it, promise.
As if I haven’t heard this story before. First a goldfish, then a canary and then a hamster. One swam away, one flew away and what happened to the third one is still a mystery. This months flavour seems to be the reptiles. I got nothing against them it’s just not your average cat or dog kind of pet.
What do you know about reptiles? I ask. And the next ten minutes go without commas and full stops. In summary they are the coolest things ever. It’s another one of those must have thing that he will get bored of in a weeks time. So I quiz him about reptiles. For every correct answer I give him a point. If he gets ten points he can get himself a reptile.
The questions I ask aren’t hard. After all I don’t want him to fail. I must say he knows quite a bit about reptiles. But when I ask him about what they eat, there is silence. Most insects are carnivore. They eat meat. That includes insects, mice and birds. Since Sebastian is a vegetarian he didn’t want to know about this. Like a good snake, he wriggles and twists. However, snakes are still eating other animals. Just about any kind of animal.
All of a sudden the mood swings and he seems to be less interested in reptiles. There have to be reptiles that eat vegetables. Aren’t there? To make things simple, no.
Sebastian goes quiet. He goes to his room. I guess he needs some time to think about it. He is in his room for some time.
Then he comes back and says. I take a gecko.
That is a bit of a surprise to me. After all a gecko still eats insects. I get told that geckos eat mostly mosquitos and flies. And because we have too many of those here in summer it would be a better solution than insect sprays. Well, who can argue with that. We get a gecko.
I never really thought of it this way. But the gecko actually does a pretty good job. He is on the wall behind the television and eats all the little flies and mosquitoes that enter the house. He is a pretty efficient addition to the family. We don’t have to feed him and the housing is easy fixed as well. He sleeps during the day in the sock drawer and at night he is on the hunt for all those pesky insects. I’m impressed. It seems to me like a win win situation.
The end
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