I "never" win. . .

So an interesting side story to a previous post has come about, and I can't resist.

You will remember in the last post, that we recently went about getting a larger vivarium for Dudley. Something that I didn't mention in that post (because I never thought in a million years that anything would ever come of it) was that when we were waiting at the register getting ready to pay, some random guy comes up to us pointing out that there is a drawing for a new and complete habitat setup from Exo Terra (the company that makes the Vivs we like)- their new "Mayan Rain forest Kit". Turns out that the guy wasn't some random stranger trying to be cute, he was the rep for the distributor in the US of the Exo Terra products- since they are based in Europe. We chit chatted back and forth, and I made some sort of a "yeah right, like I would ever win, and what the heck do I need another terrarium for" comment (since this wasn't the right sort of stuff for a bearded dragon). After all, the guy should be happy that I was in the process of buying several hundred dollars of "stuff" from the products he reps, so you think I would be the last person he would be trying to target for some give away. He wasn't going to drop it anytime soon, so I finally said "fine, where do I go to fill out the slip" just so I can get him off my back and move on since we needed to get going.

I go back to the table set up, and they have the box with the "prize"- which is a very nice, so maybe it wouldn't be all that bad to win; maybe we could have the ball python live in it. As I was filling out the slip, I watched as several others were back there stuffing the fishbowl with entries, and thought to myself "oh well, at least that rep will leave me alone". As I was walking up to the front, I shot a comment his way about how my entry was the one that is on the yellow slip of paper and everyone else was on white (even though this wasn't the case), so he better pick mine since I went though the effort of filling out an entry .

As far as I am concerned, this situation is over, since I never win anything.

Interesting side story to all of this is that my brother Jake is the sort of person that wins everything, all the time. If we go to the casino, he is hitting the jackpot. He wins the concert tickets on the radio contest. He plays the crane game where you try to get the stuffed animal, and not only does he pull out a stuffed animal, but there is something like an iPod that happened to be snagged (I don't think this has actually happened- he wins the stuffed animals all the time, but I know that one time he did find a video iPod laying in the middle of the road in practically mint condition and after trying for a while he never found the owner, so "ta da an iPod for Jake.")

So I'm going about life, thinking Dudley's new digs rock, and on Thursday in the afternoon, Gigi calls me at work:

"Pet Expo just called, and you are the winner of the Terrarium, you need to go to customer service with ID and pick it up"

Needless to say, I was not expecting this.

Yes indeed, I had won, and there was a very nice set up sitting there with my name on it. So now the question is "what do we do with this one?" Maybe this is a sign that Garek's desire to get another pet for his birthday was somehow "OK'ed" by the powers that be (after all, our aversion to some other new pet was based on the fact that Garek wanted another reptile of sorts, and the main cost associated with these sort of pets are the habitats- and that was just given to us).

So now we have the challenge of what to do- it would work for Sammy Stick for a while, but isn't big enough to be his permanent home. We could try selling it, and get some $$ to offset the cost of Dudley's new house, but never get what it is worth. So we are looking at what sort of animals could call this one home without having to upgrade in the future, that preferably has similar dietary needs to the other animals so we don't have to stock some other sort of food in addition to what we currently have, and somehow have Garek think that this other pet was the exact pet he wanted all along (originally he said he wants another Bearded Dragon, but there is risk with that since we would need to get a female in order to have it be able to live with Dudley, or risk needing to get another huge Vivarium setup).

At this time, Collard Lizards look to be a possibility, but we will see. . .