♫We’re gonna take a walk outside today, gonna see what we can find today…♫
It began with my daughter, waking us up at midnight, sobbing. She’d just noticed her gecko, Mochi, was missing for possibly as long as twenty-four hours. Geckos are great at hiding, so it’s really unknown just how long she was MIA. But one thing was clear, finding her was going to be nearly impossible.
We have two dogs and three cats, all of whom would spell doom if they saw a lizard out and about. Winston, our big dog, isn’t a hunter, but he’s eaten critters in the yard. Dilly is a terrier and hunting for small critters is in her DNA.
And cats, by default, are just a-holes who love to torment things smaller than them. Well, and humans, of course.
So, if Mochi were to escape our daughter’s room, it was “outlook not so good” as a Magic 8-Ball would say.
Also, our daughter’s room is an obstacle course for even us humans, so a gecko had about a billion places to curl up and hide.
So, half asleep, my wife and I are trying to carefully sift through the room while consoling our distraught daughter, hoping to find a live, healthy gecko. We called off the search around 1am, vowing to resume the next day. We stuff a towel against the door to prevent escape if Mochi is still in the room (which I fully believed).
With most of the room turned over, we still had no gecko. Fast forward to the NEXT day and I finish searching every square inch of the room a gecko could logically access. At this point, I was fearing we’d somehow accidentally thrown her out with the trash or put her in a donation pile of clothing or, of course, one of the myriad pets had gotten to her.
Life went on for the rest of the day. My daughter went to a concert and my wife and I got ready for bed.
Shortly thereafter, I heard the garage door and figured it was our youngest daughter returning. Several moments passed without any action and I wondered what was going on when our OLDEST daughter entered our bedroom.
“Someone please come out to the kitchen and tell me whether what I’m seeing under the fridge is a gecko or not.”
Several short seconds later, we’re in the kitchen. Now, if you’ve remotely followed me on any social media, you’ve seen my “Thor Vs. Fridge” photos of my cat, Thor, basically staring down our refrigerator. It was a pretty funny bit for quite a while but, this night, he was INTENSELY interested, pacing in front of the fridge and hunkering down to look underneath it.
calling for a temporary truce in the current “Thor Vs. Fridge” hostilities, we shined a flashlight under the major appliance, intensely hopeful we would find a live, healthy gecko hanging out under the fridge.
And we did!
After moving the fridge and a bit of lizard wrangling, we had one very pissed off Mochi in a carrier and returned her to her enclosure. Soon after, we had a very happy daughter.
So let me tell you what Mochi had to go through. She fell four feet from her terrarium onto the floor, then had to climb over all sorts of things in our daughter’s room only to then squeeze her chonky ass under the door, then make her way ACROSS THE ENTIRE HOUSE while avoiding every cat and dog before getting into the kitchen to find the warmth of the fridge.
At any point, this could’ve gone badly or been missed completely. But geckos are nocturnal and most of the animals sleep in our bedroom so she chose the absolute right time to go on an adventure. She was gone for probably 50-60 hours total and I still can’t believe she’s alive and perfectly fine.
What has Thor learned from all this? He’s a hero and we should all worship him.
Anyway, here’s our explorer:
seanrfrazier.com 