Our sweet little gecko died on Tuesday.  I’m not exactly sure what happened.  I just don’t think he was getting nourished right.  He was still a baby when we got him, so we knew he may not make it.

I was so so sad over this little guy. For reals.  Cried off and on all day.  Couldn’t’ even think about having to tell the boys.  It was a bit ridiculous. 😉

But it all was ok.  The boys took it surprisingly well, especially Matisse.  No tears were shed (other than by me, of course).  Matisse mentioned a few times how he was really sad that Geckie died, and I just told him I was too and that it was ok to be sad.  We did what we could and gave him a nice life while he was here.

We decided to bury him in a ring box underneath the Japanese maple in the side yard.  Right next to the Buddha statue.  I dug the whole.  Matisse set the ring box inside, and he and Julien covered it with dirt.

“After we cover it, you have to pat it down good,” Julien instructed.

“Yes, good job,” I said.

We talked about getting a pretty stone and writing his name on it as a tombstone.  Julien then suggested we put the Buddha on top as a tombstone for now.  So we did, along with some pretty little rocks.

We sat there quietly for a few minutes and pondered the question of what happens to life after death.

“Maybe if his mommy’s dead, he’ll get to be with her now,” Matisse suggested.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said.  “Let’s just say a little prayer for him and ask for his little lizard soul to be reunited with his spirit family.  Just bless him to be safe and happy and always think happy thoughts about him.”

We all talked about how much we loved him and reminisced about that night we caught him.  No tears were shed, but we shared lots of smiles.

Then we ended our little ceremony and took a drive.  And ended up at PetSmart.  And their Chinese water dragons were on sale for $24.99. We figured since we already had the set up, why not get a cool replacement lizard?? 😉

Except this guy isn’t the size of my pinky. Yeah, he’s small now. But he’ll get to be about 3ft long, not including the tail. (And this dude has one long crazy tail. I’ll try to get a good picture of it.)

The boys have named him Draco – after a long discussion of lots of names including Yoshi (my personal fav) and Hong Kong.

It was fun to sit down at lunch and read through the pamphlet learning how to take care of him. Matisse is beyond excited and wants to know everything, of course.

Though there’s that part of me wondering what the hell I just got myself into (especially after crying all day Tuesday accusing myself of killing Geckie), it makes my heart happy to be able to share times like this as a family.  We mourned and contemplated the deep questions of life together…and then we added a new member to our family and shared the joy of exploring and learning together.

I will admit that I’ve always been fascinated with lizards, so it didn’t take much coaxing to get me to agree to this.  Of course, now I’m wondering what I’ve gotten myself into after seeing pics of these things full grown and realizing that we need a much bigger tank.  But it’s fun.  He’ll be super cool when he’s full grown and we can let him walk around.  And watching him grow and learning how to take care of him is something that will be fun for us as a family.

Sometimes you just gotta be spontaneous and live without over analyzing things too much.