Spirit of the Wind

I got mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms, specifically. Unfortunately I waited too long before harvesting them and they were a little woody, but once chopped to bits and cooked in butter for a good long time they were tender enough.



I also got a lizard recently. They're an African-fat tailed gecko. Really should upload pictures of them but here's a picture of their enclosure.



And here's the bench it and the rest of my plants are on. I've got a basil, angelwing begonia, a couple cacti, amaryllis, drunkard's dream cactus, and jewel orchid. The jewel orchid would be blooming, but the cats ate them. Again.

The basil, meanwhile, seems to be dying.

One of the universal things one usually hears from reptile keepers is that, with some exceptions, you should never keep different species together. Now, the herpetologists I've talked to (I live in a university town, and we have an excellent herpetology department), and maybe three or four years of experience, say that house geckos and green anoles, if kept in the right environment (one with hiding places from each other and plenty of space) and the same size, should be able to do okay together.

Well, so much for that idea. Not only have I learned that I'm wrong, I've learned that geckos can squeak. Loudly. And I hope to whatever powers that exist that I never have to hear that again. I found the anole straddling the gecko (I do not believe it was a case of forced copulation) and attacking him.

The gecko's fine, more or less, but I think I now know where that injury he got a while ago is. So now I'll have to separate the two. Fortunately, I have a spare enclosure left over after my garter snake passed away. Unfortunately, the gecko has a habit of escaping, and I don't know how secure the enclosure is against lizard escape acts.