Page 30 - Animal Kin

Over the next months we had a lot of drama with these babies. They grew at different rates and had to be separat- ed from each other quickly or they would start nibbling each other’s tails off. If the crickets were too big then they would start eating the babies. I had four or five tanks going to keep the different sizes apart. Max chose him favorite one to keep- a large and dramatically marked one that he named BabyBlitz.
We gave them to friends, science classrooms and even traded some for food in a local pet store. Soon we just had the three. The baby grew fast and was in with his parents before the year was out.
BabyBlitz was a faster mover than our others had been and a visit to the back yard could quickly become a wild goose chase to get him back. But by being so active he was also fun. One summer when we were away for a month or so, I moved their cage onto the front porch. At some point we heard that one of the lizards was missing- I suspected that it was BabyBlitz. There wasn’t much we could do to try to find him so I comforted Max with the thought that he was probably having a great time in the big green world.