Selena and Pacman

I gave in and my son got his Tarantula. She is a Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula, Gramastola rosea. He got a female rose hair. He named her Selena. For Selena Gomez. He first thought of calling her Hannah, but thought that people would think he was naming her Hannah Montana. I like either name they are pretty. So we have Selena the spider now living in our home.




I am not crazy about spiders at all, and this one is going to take some getting use to on my end. She is a large spider. She was a little cranky when I let her out of her little deli cup. I also found out she is able to climb glass. Yikes. I did some research on tarantulas to see what would be the best species for the boy to get. It came down to 2 species, the Chilean Rose Hair and the Pink Toe. Selena is in a real simple set up right now, i am going to build her a living vivarium with live pants. Semi moist ground cover and a cork round hide and a water dish.

I finally received my albino Pacman, after a year of searching, I got one. I was thrilled. Exactly what I wanted. An Albino Pacman frog. Mine is a Ceratophrys cranwelli (Cranwell's horned frog). Of coarse in this picture mine is really dirty, and frightened. I have him in a little quarantine tank away from my other frogs. I don’t want to take the chance with them. They are just fire bellies but they are my fire bellies and I like them.. I just need to figure out a name for him now. Sometimes I name them right away sometimes it is easy and other times I debate on a name for a few days before I figure what I think is the perfect name. I will let you know when I finally name him.

Mesa Reptile Expo

Yesterday was the Mesa Reptile Expo. I have been looking forward to it for weeks. I had set out looking for a Pacman frog. I wanted an Albino one. This is an Albino Pacman.




All anyone had was strawberry Pacman frogs. While a strawberry is very pretty, I didn’t want to pay $60 for a frog. I will wait and get the albino later.



This show was mostly snakes. Of course there was the usual fare of torts where there. I did see a lot of red foots and Sulcatas, there was an incredible amount of Aldabra, Herman’s and Greek torts too. Even a few Indian Star Torts. Which are really beautiful but very pricy. I think somehow they are worth it though, considering you are getting a pet that will outlive you.

The hot snakes it seems is once again the Ball Python, there was more Ball pythons than any other animal I saw. There were some beautiful colored BPS. A couple of my favorite the piebald. There were bubblebees, butter ghosts, pine stripes, jungles, lemon blast spider, lots of normals, cinnamon, carmel, Ivory, snow, even a few albinos.

The red tails where also a very common snake at the show. I saw an albino and one that looked like a candy candy, it was all red and white. It lacked the black and brown pigments. It was very pretty.

I was also amused to see a brown and white Rosy Boa, and a normal rosy boa, the only rosy boas I saw at the show. There were also a few Kenyan Sand Boas in a couple of morphs. And I saw my very first up close rough scaled sand boa.

One table was dedicated to nothing but Carpet Pythons. They are a neat looking snake. They are not smooth scaled like most pythons and boas are, they are rougher snaked more like a rattlesnake.

The boy held 2 snakes while there. He wanted to touch everything, but I told him from the beginning not to touch anything. I was serious about him not spreading something from one snake or lizard table display to another. Or worst yet bringing it home to my critters.

Reptiles can harbor diseases that may not affect the colony or species they are living in, but when you introduce them to a new colony, species or just bring it home to your collection it could make them very sick or even kill them. So I told the boy he was not allowed to touch anything and when he did, he had to use the hand sanitizer first. I do that when I take the animals to my son’s school too. So the kids don’t give my reptiles some weird disease.

So the boy and I wandered the whole show before decided what to buy.

We say 3 Gila Monsters



Mexican Beaded Lizard



The boy holding a Gopher snake



And a timber rattlesnake



Like I said I had set out for an albino Pacman frog. That is not what I came home with.

My fall back was going to be a tomato frog or a crested gecko. But it had to be a harlequin, or so I thought. The color I liked was the creamsicle fire. They had lots of beautiful harlequins. There where tigers, and high yellows, and Dalmatians too. All kinds of adorable little babies all the size of tootsie rolls candies.

I couldn’t find a tomato frog anywhere. I did see one pixie, which like the Pacman is a large species of frog. Lots of little dart frogs, and some really small but very cute red eye tree frogs and green tree frogs, all the size of Tootsie Roll candies too.

I left the reptile show with a grumpy, crested gecko that stole my heart when he went from him first owner’s hand to mine and then straight up my arm to my shoulder.

This is Yoshi a red tiger male. He isn’t a baby, he is full grown. I think he is a lovely creature. His skin feels like suede, and he is a nice orange color. He can soften his color a little and he looks beige when he does.

Fabulous Weekend

At midnight on Friday/Saturday we went over to Wal-Mart. Now the middle of the night is the only time I will go to Wal-Mart willingly. Shhh…. Don’t tell anybody, I still hate the store. I got my carpet shampooer there. The boy pushed it around the store to the cashier stands. I also let him pick out a new Skylander figure. There are about 100 Skylander figures, we combined have about 24 of them.

First things first of course. We had to do all of our chores. We had help though. I hired a cleaning service to tackle the stuff I couldn’t tackle due to my allergy to just about everything (that my skin comes in contact with that is). Two ladies cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen. I knew it would take a while to do that. One spent about an 2 hours I the bathroom and half an hour in the living room and the other spent 2 and a half in the kitchen. But the kitchen and bathroom are clean again and that is all that matters. The boy and I did other things around the house, dusting, putting things away, vacuuming etc… we even got the back yard racked up and everything thrown away. The tree has been dropping leaves, we bagged up about 10 kitchen bags of leaves from the yard, plus branches and such that we tossed into totter directly so it wouldn’t tear up the bags. The house looks really good now. Oh and we got the carpet cleaned too. Love my new carpet shampooer. Works great.

The ladies left about 11:30 and I dragged the boy out of the house about noon. Made him go with me to a doll show at the church nearby. I was actually disappointed. I did a search for miniature show, and got the doll show. I did find a tiny little decoration to sit on the mantel of the fireplace I have for a room box I am building. The boy came away with a Christmas present for his Grandfather, and I added a dumb little McDonald’s Darth Vader to my Darth Vader Collection.

Then as promised I took the boy to Arizona Mills. I took him to the aquarium, Sealife at Arizona Mills. It is was nice little visit. There was the cutest little sea turtle and I got to see my all time favorite fish a Lion Fish. Beautiful creatures. Someday I would love to set up a huge tank, 180-200 gallons for 1 or a pair of lionfish. We both got a bag of gummies in the gift shop, mine was filled with gummy frogs and turtles and the boys with a little of everything.





We both got a bag of gummies in the gift shop, mine was filled with gummy frogs and turtles and the boys with a little of everything.

We took a stroll through Arizona Mills, and I let the boy go into Toys R Us and ride some weird space ship ride in the mall. I sat on the bench and watch him. It was a fun walk.

We took our 3DS systems with us. We each got 3 new tags from people in the mall. I told him we will have to go more often and walk the mall without 3DS systems.

For dinner a little early we went over to Joe’s Crab Shack. The boy had the KJ Steam pot and I had the Joe’s Classic Steam pot spiced up to the Sunset Grill. I let him talk me into dessert, we each had the crabby apply crumble. It was ok but not great. I am not a fan of apples. Especially the green ones. I also had a Poppin’ Rockin. It was fun, you add Pop Rocks to the drink, they shoot off in all different directions all at once. Makes a noise and a mess. But it really cool.

After that we went over and watch Wreck It Ralph, that movie was just too cute. I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it all the time. It highly recommend you go and see it.


Sunday we took Neo to the Groomers and did the grocery shopping and got the supplies for the reptiles to winterize them. Heating pads and such.

After Neo was done at the Groomers we headed over to another mall. Took the boy to what use to be Christown Mall, but is now Spectrum. The boy desperately needed some new shoes. His had a hole in the soul of it. He got a nice new pair that should last him a little while.

We saw another movie afterwards. Hotel Transylvania. Those of you that know me, know I am anti-Halloween. This was not a Halloween movie. Ok yes it was Dracula and monsters and stuff. But it wasn’t Halloween. I don’t think it was even October in the movie. I adored this movie.



It did not take me long to realize that Dracula was voiced by Adam Sandler. But he is my favorite actor so I knew his voice when I heard it, even with a Dracula accent. It took me a little longer to recognize Kevin James’ voice, by the way he played Frankenstein. David Spade is also a voice and so if Fran Dresher. I knew Fran from the Nanny, she sounds exactly the same and I still can’t tell you which one was David Spade. Oh and my son was delighted that Selena Gomez leant her voice to the character of Dracula’s daughter Mavis.

There is a ton of cool movies coming out that I would like to see.