December 2011

Shortly after Ike fell ill and died Mike followed the leader over the rainbow bridge. Saddened by our brief relationship with our chameleons we wanted to bury them but our father, the smartest smoking moustache I knew, told us the ground would be frozen since it was winter in Ohio.

The smartest smoking moustache I knew needed to rid our home of our dried Christmas tree and said he had an idea. He took our chameleons and the Christmas tree and lead us down to the river and out onto the canoe landing.

He had us place the box holding the chameleon corpses on top of the Christmas tree floating in the water. We said our goodbyes and after lighting his Winston cigarette, the smartest smoking moustache I knew lit the tree on fire and pushed it out into the current.

We watched from the landing as we gave Mike & Ike a well deserved Viking Funeral.

The End.

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After a few weeks of feeding them meal-worms and watching them do just about nothing, the smartest smoking mustache I knew (a.k.a. dad, but as a child all I could associate with him were his moustache, glasses and his brand of cigarettes – Winstons so from here on out he will be referred to as the smartest smoking moustache I knew) told us that we could tie a shoe lace around their necks and walk them like dogs. Most likely he got this idea from something he had seen during Vietnam and way before there was anything called PETA.

Keith and I tried this with little success. If Mike or Ike tried to run they just hung themselves. There was no training taking place for these little creatures. I remember their little hearts beating rapidly from fear whenever we had them out of their tank. In hindsight it is pretty clear as to why this response occurred.

Here is a little info on this type of chameleon…

A Carolina anole will turn brown when cold or distressed. Keith’s was almost always brown and it was cold in our house for it was winter and our room was especially cold in the winter time. Having a shoe lace tied around one’s neck by an eight year old who is trying to train you to walk on command could cause a bit of stress in one’s life as well. The trouble is there were too many possibilities as to what caused Ike to pass away, but he did and no autopsy was ever performed.

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One Holiday season my younger brother and I had somehow managed to talk my mother into buying us pet lizards from a local pet store. This memory seems to be so far removed from reality as something that my mother would do that I had to write about it and speak with my siblings as to whether it really happened or not. Going into a pet store was not something out of the ordinary for us as children but taking something home as a pet was an extraordinary accomplishment on our part.

It seems like as a child I was always asking my mom for things and she was always saying no. I know this wasn’t the case because I have photographic and physical evidence that gifts for Christmas or birthdays were not just underwear and socks in our stockings, but action figures, dolls, play sets, toys, and gaming systems for those special events.

As I am now a parent I think of how dangerous a pet store could be. When my child is of an age where she can express her wants or needs I think I will avoid taking her into a pet store at all costs. Taking a child into a pet store seems to me like the equivalent of involuntary servitude. Chances are you’ll be exiting a store with a new family pet and no matter how much they tell you they’ll take care of it, you’ll be the one dealing with feces and feeding. You better have the fortitude and discipline of a Buddhist monk not to give into that child’s wishes.

The lizards we received were called chameleons, not the Old World variety that change a cornucopia of color, but the New World version that can change from two colors- green and brown. Their true names are Carolina anole lizards commonly found in the United States and in towns like Palmetto, FL. My brother and I just called them chameleons since it was easier and although we were disappointed in their lack of a color palette, to have lizards as pets was pretty exotic and cool in our eyes.

When I went to do a strip of my recollection of this event I could not recall their names. I imagined that we gave them wild names similar to the names G.I. Joe action figures of this era would be named like, Bloodclot and Skidmark. I asked Keith if he remembered and he didn’t, but my eldest sister, Amanda, did. They were named Mike & Ike. I don’t recall which was which, so for the sake of this story I will say mine was named Mike and Keith’s was Ike.

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