Leaping Lizards...and missing snakes!

Leaping lizards may be the only animal we are missing at our house!  They just keep appearing.  Many years back, we started a salt water aquarium.  That lasted less than a year and was a costly lesson we had to learn. We moved on to a fresh water aquarium and things are easier, especially since Dave cleans the tank and Olivia feeds the fish daily.  Looks like it could use a nice cleaning at the moment.

Well over a year ago, we finally gave in to Olivia's constant requests and bought gerbils.  Fluffy met his demise last year and he's buried in the backyard.  Charlie, on the other hand, is healthy and enjoys time in Olivia's Barbie house or wherever she may let him play.

 

The dwarf water frogs have been with us for almost three years.  They are by far, the easiest of our brood.  No cleaning their eco-friendly water cube of a tank, and only feed them on Monday's and Friday's.  I can remember that, right?

We said "no more animals" after Kobe, but look what appeared two weekends ago when the kids returned home with Mimi!  Tadpoles!!  We've grown frogs before and both Olivia and Zach came home with, as Olivia counted, 22 tadpoles.  Ugh, do we really have to do this again?!  So, late that Sunday night, I was hobbling around, while Dave was in Germany, boiling lettuce for 15 minutes, draining it and freezing it for the tads.  I'm a sucker.  The water is less murky now too.

Olivia...the snake handler

And the ultimate!  Our newest reptile is.......Stripe!  Dave was landscaping Saturday.  When I returned from getting Zach's birthday cake, Olivia was proud to announce she had a snake.  Yep.....a snake.  After Dave confirmed it was not poisonous (he's a snake expert, I guess?!), she decided to carry that baby snake around for the last several days.  Stripe was supposed to go home the next morning, but alas, Olivia wanted to play with him one more time before releasing him.  Guess what happened next?.......

He got loose in the playroom.  We have yet to find him.  We had high hopes that Kobe would find him, but no luck.  

  So, if you afraid of snakes, DO NOT come to my house.  

I think I'll stick with this cutie pie.  He's more affectionate. :-)