A close call

Two weeks ago, I moved from New Jersey to Massachusetts and nearly lost Citrus in the process. This post would have been a tearful post explaining and decrying the brevity of this blog, seeing as I would have been gecko-less.

I rented a 12-ft Penske truck (which, by the way, is so wonderful a company that I'm renting from them again this week as I move from Massachusetts to DC). Once all of my belongings were loaded into it, I moved Citrus from his tank to his travel box, and placed him securely in the cabin on top of his tank. Car rides are traumatic events for the reptile, and I wanted to make sure he was moved into the truck as late as possible.

As I was getting ready to drive off, I received a call from my brother, who was helping his girlfriend move concurrently. Their old U-Haul trailer had broken down before getting out of the driveway, and they needed help getting a truck. I ran off and accompanied my brother to the Penske rental office. By the time I returned to my own truck, I had been gone for nearly 45 minutes, during which time, my boyfriend soon discovered, Citrus had escaped from his travel case. The lid hadn't been closed tightly because I had placed an excessive number of towels to provide him with more cushioning.

I looked all over the cabin, crawled into nooks and crannies and searched under the seats, but the gecko was nowhere to be found (it was also unfortunate that Citrus is a similar shade of yellow as the Penske paint). Recalling stories from NPR's Car Talk about leopard geckos that make their way from the pedals to the dashboard, never to be heard from again, I checked the spaces underneath the truck's pedals and, to my surprise, found them to be too narrow for Citrus. Finally, I noticed that the floor to the cabin -- a large gray sheet of plastic -- was not nailed securely at the edges. Upon lifting the edges of the plastic and discovering carpeting, I concluded that the lizard had crawled underneath, deeper than I could reach. Heartbroken and horrified, and with visions of Citrus stuck underneath my feet, I had no choice but to proceed as planned. I drove off.

A couple of hours onto the highway, my boyfriend exclaimed, "There he is!" Lo and behold, Citrus had emerged from his hiding place and was crawling behind the passenger seat. But he wiggled out of our grasp and hid underneath the plastic flooring once more. With a renewed sense of hope, we drove on and within the hour, Citrus appeared again. We pulled up by the side of CT-15 and scooped up the lizard, which had been calmly wandering behind us. After a stern talking-to and many tears of relief, Citrus was returned to his travel case and he completed the ride in our lap.

Bad gecko...!