Not the best day

Well, Elise decided to take her bearded dragon outside to show him a hideout she had made and she set him down on a log. And there went Finn McCool, off into the jungle behind our house. Bearded dragons can run very fast, so by the time we heard her screaming hysterically he was quite gone. We poked around in the palmettos and vines for a couple hours trying to find him, but the ground is covered in leaves now and Finn is designed for camouflage. And so he is gone.

I have read many stories on the Internet this afternoon about bearded dragons running away and then somehow making it back home after days and months. I am praying this will happen with Finn McCool. We will be spending a lot of time outside this weekend searching in sunny spots for him. Fortunately, the lows for the next several days are going to be in the high 60s, so if he can survive the predators he might be okay. And there is a large creek in the middle of the jungle, and a busy street along the edge, so he might decide to come back in the direction of our house. He ran off into lizard paradise at any rate.

Elise, as you can imagine, is absolutely beside herself with grief. I’m struggling to understand how to deal with the situation, as we had told her many times not to do exactly what she did and she decided to do it anyway. Sometimes kids have to learn the hard way. On the other hand, he is a living thing and this is a very sad situation. We were all attached to the little fellow and it’s going to be strange doing school work without him perched on top of the books. I hope he is okay.