The Wannabe

Jaxon had a very existential experience today.  He and I own a tokay gecko, and for those who don’t know, tokay’s are known as the pit-bulls of geckos. Vicious pit-bull stereotypes aside, this gecko, named Axas, is really quite mean. He’s kept in a glass terrarium that locks at the top and has two small lidded openings that can be unlocked and removed for easy feeding without the risk of escape. His enclosure is cleaned out roughly once a month using a pair of tongs and heavy-duty gardening gloves that he can’t bite through should he get the chance. Why would I keep such a pet, you might ask? Because he’s pretty to look at. He’s about a foot long from head to tail with a body about the diameter of a silver dollar. His head is crowned with spike-like bumps and he has vivid red and blue spots all over his body, which he can change from white to black.

Like many reptiles, Axas eats crickets. Once per week, fifteen live crickets are dropped through one of the small openings in the top of his enclosure and the lid is quickly locked back in place, lest he try to make a break for it. If you’ve never seen a gecko eat a cricket, it’s really a very primitive, predator/prey sort of experience, as Axas slowly maneuvers himself into position and patiently waits for a cricket to pass by his motionless face. Then, when the time is right, he strikes! Pouncing swiftly and deftly, he engulfs his pray which disappears into his gapping mouth. Then he slowly and carefully repositions himself for another attack. The whole thing is quite primal.

A few months ago, Jaxon was with me on my cricket run and I discovered that he loved everything about it. He enjoyed the pet store and the friendly employees there. He liked watching the crickets jump around in their large tub while they’re wrangled up and dumped into a bag, which is then filled with air like a balloon and handed to him to carry. They bounce around in the bag and he laughed and smiled as he watched them. He enjoyed it so much that I decided to make it a regular part of our Wednesday night routine. He’s really good at it now and the pet store employees all know him. He says, “rickets peace” which the clerks know means “crickets please.” And after they hand him the bag he says, “tank-oo” meaning “thank you.” The first few times he shook the bag but now he carries them very carefully with two hands, right in front of his face so he can see them. I hand him two dollars which he then hands to the check-out clerk. We get thirty-five cents in change, and some of the clerks even try to count it out for him. Then he walks away beaming with the “rickets” clutched carefully to his chest. I think he likes the responsibility.

When we get home with them, he likes to stand on his stool and stare into the terrarium while I dump the crickets in. Whenever he’s at my house he always takes a few moments to look in at the “echo” and watch the crickets. He laughs as they jump around, but quickly loses interest before Axas starts eating. This week was different, however. Usually Axas is at the back of the enclosure but tonight he was towards the front where Jaxon watches from. As I released the crickets to their final home, one happened to jump quickly right in front of the hungry gecko’s mouth. With food literally falling right in front of him, Axas went for it. However, in his haste to capitalize on the opportunity, he didn’t bother to set himself properly for the attack. He was slow and his pounce was clumsy. The cricket saw him coming and tried to jump away, but even a slow gecko is fast, and his jaws clamped down on his dinner. Barely. He only caught the back third of the cricket, enough to ensnare it in his jaws, but not enough to kill it outright.

And there was Jaxon, inches away, watching in horror as the cricket hung out of the gecko’s mouth, writhing in pain. Another quick lunge and a snap of his jaws and Axas had completely consumed it. Jaxon screamed. Then he started to cry and bang on the glass, repeating “RICKET! RICKET!” over and over again. Then came the long wails of “RIIIIIICKEEEEEET!” as I swooped him up, patted his back, and removed him from the scene of miniature carnage. He cried for five full minutes and no amount of comforting seemed to stop the tears from streaming down his face. He was obviously devastated that one had been eaten. Perhaps he thought of them as pets, since I let him have so much responsibility over them, and he had formed some sort of emotional attachment to them. Did he think that we simply purchased the same fifteen crickets every week? I often wish I could see his thoughts. Of course, maybe he didn’t care about the crickets at all. Maybe the simple fact that he had just watched one living thing get eaten by another was traumatic for him. Either way, he wasn’t happy about it.

After about half an hour I was finally able to convince him to go back into the room and look into the terrarium. I didn’t want him to suddenly be afraid to go anywhere near it. Axas had eaten his fill for the day and was resting comfortably behind his little pond. Jaxon looked in, smacked the glass, and in a very stern voice said, “echo!” Then a cricket hopped in front of the glass where he was looking in and he smiled and looked at me. Did he think it was the same cricket that had been eaten? I’m not sure, but he was suddenly ok. He watched for several minutes, longer than I have ever seen him stare in, and then walked away to play with one of his toys, clearly satisfied that the gecko would not be eating any more crickets tonight.

He’s asleep now, and I’m wondering what, if anything, I should do with this situation. If he was five and his goldfish had just died, I would probably sit down and talk to him about it. But he’s only two and with his limited vocabulary, it would be a very short discussion that he likely wouldn’t understand at all. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of Axas, since he went back into the room later that night on his own and looked in for a moment. I guess I’ll just assume that he’s ok and see what happens next week. I don’t plan on letting him watch when I dump the crickets in though.