[this pic is one of a grouper being cleaned by a pederson's shrimp. i love it!]
I FOUND WAILEY!
he would've been gone two weeks on saturday, so, needless to say, i was getting very worried. i searched tirelessly for the first week or so.. then the depression of searching but not finding (you know, like fluffy) set in. i didn't want have another animal to sit and wonder about... where is he? is he ok?
it was confounding because there's no way he could've escaped from the yard; it's fenced in! bjorn could get out, because he's little and could fit through gaps, but there's no way wailey could. yet, after searching on both my and balu's parts, we couldn't find him.
then today, i got home from work and was doing my usual 6:30 routine: watching seinfeld. the one where george finds out that he is marisa tomei's time. ellie was in bed with me. he kept hopping over to the window, which isn't unusual. but this time, he looked down, to the ground UNDER the window, rather than up towards the birds. hmm! i thought and checked it out. sure enough, there was wailey, looking like he was trying to get himself stuck in a roll of chickenwire. i yelled out, "WAILEY!" and ran outside to scoop his dirty little self up.
so, he got a bath and a nice meal (with a banana on top!) and a stern lecture about never, ever doing that to mama again! YAY! i think he did just fine in the yard.. it's been raining every single damn day and he had a leaf stuck to his face, so i guess he found food. :)
i just checked on him again and he's ambling around the perimeter of the enclosure. i'm thinking i'll buy some wood and expand it out this weekend; i don't think happy tortoises busy themselves with trying to find a way out, so maybe he's not happy. i'll have to dig him a nice little covered burrow to hide in.
also, i got my wallet back. :) fabulous!
the guy who found my wallet works at an enterprise car place, so i went there to pick it up. he was gone when i got there, so i waited around a few minutes.. when he did get there, he said my wallet was at his place. ruh-roh. (seeing as how today i wore a dress/skirt for the first time in months, i was hyper aware of male attention; i had forgotten how much men like to see bare legs!) then i realized, wait, did i detect a hint of gay in that voice? sure enough, he mentioned his boyfriend. safe! anyway, so he pointed me to the car we'd ride in to run over to his apartment, "the focus," he said. "don't worry, it's not mine." i had to laugh -- "oh, he'll feel bad later when he seems me drive off in an old civic," from which a nice new black focus would be a huge step up.
anyway, that reminded me of this guy i went to school with a coupla years back, adam. he was this, i dunno, italian guy? nice fella. unexpected member of the honors program. we usually used to walk out to our cars together after class. he pointed out his car one night, a white ford focus. it was one of his job's perks; he was a salesperson for pepsi, so he got to use the car he drove for the job for free. the one downside? it had the pepsi logo on the side.
"big fan of pepsi, eh?" i kidded with him one night. "yeah, yeah, real funny," he answered. "my friends call it the cockblock on wheels." i still laugh when i think of that.
