THE name of the beast sitting on my shoulder is Boba, named after a character from the Star Wars movie franchise.
Boba is a male bearded dragon. Now nine months old, when fully grown he’ll measure around two foot in length. His arrival has resulted in the creation of an ecosystem in the O’Kane household. His daily diet consists of locusts, calciworms and morio worms which have to be fed live; this means they also need to be fed and watered to increase their nutritional value for Boba… you’re beginning to see the complexities.
The lizard belongs to my 13-year-old son who’d been asking for one for years, and so, with Covid and lockdown, we thought it would help keep him occupied. When we collected it from the shop, I asked the owner if it could be fed crickets; he shuddered at the very suggestion.
He admitted that while the lizard would happily eat crickets, there was no way he’d recommend them. He explained that when he’d started out collecting lizards, he’d bought a box of crickets. Being jumpy wee things, one managed to escape during feeding, disappearing before he could recapture it.
That night, as he settled down to watch TV, the cricket began its nocturnal serenade; if you’ve been to hotter climates on holiday, you’ll know the sound. This didn’t annoy the man; in fact, he initially found the sound relaxing as it transported him to sultry nights, sipping cocktails at a beach bar in Spain.
But if it was relaxing the first night, a few weeks later it had become torturous. Tormented, he’d pulled up carpets and floorboards and even removed the fireplace surround in vain attempts to catch the infernal insect, all with no success. He was at the point of selling his house when the cricket finally expired, leaving him with PCSD – post-cricket stress disorder.
Suitably chastened, I’ve never had a cricket about the place, but we have so many locusts that our house, at times, looks like we’ve been hit by a biblical plague.
Although my son adores Boba, I still don’t understand the attraction – all the thing does is sit under a heat lamp, get fed and poo in its vivarium – well, that was until Easter Saturday.
The weather was so mild my son and wife decided to take Boba into the back garden to soak up the rays. I’d gone to purchase some essentials at B&Q, which, like many men, I wouldn’t be able to identify until I actually got into the shop.
Seemingly Boba had sat on the grass, completely motionless for 15 minutes, lulling both wife and son into a false sense of security. Then – with no warning – Boba took off at a speed nobody thought him capable of – straight into our next-door neighbour’s hedge. As my son dived headlong into the hedge where the lizard had disappeared, my wife ran into our neighbour’s back garden, much to his surprise as he relaxed in the sun.
Pulling apart his hedge, she gave a breathless and panicked half-explanation about a lost pet. He asked if our wee dog had gotten away again. "No", said my wife, "it’s our lizard". Long accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of my family, the poor man asked no further questions but kindly joined in the hunt.
Miraculously, my son discovered his lizard hiding among fallen leaves in the hedge and quickly returned him to its heat lamp, a contraption which eats up so much electricity my bill has increased by 20 per cent.
Upon arriving home and hearing the story, I pointed out we’d at least kept up with tradition, albeit swapping our annual Easter egg hunt for a lizard hunt. When the beast eventually grows to its full two-foot size, we’ll have no problem locating it if there are future escapes – all we’ll need do is follow the screams of our neighbours as it passes through their gardens.
My wife is as besotted with Boba as my son, often commenting how beautiful he is. I said she was crazy, he was an ugly beast, to which she replied, "You should feel lucky that beauty is in the eye of the beholder." With that she triumphantly flounced off.
Some of you will be amused to learn the reason I’m jumping up in the second photo is due to Boba having relieved himself down the back of my shirt. I mean, what’s wrong with a hamster, or a rabbit? I’d love a wee rabbit.
