Two lizards, both alike in breed and dignity, In one fair Zoo-scape, where we set our tale, With ancient names revive old irony, While zoo staff mourn and curse and wail. From forth the fatal curse of Shakespeare’s play A pair of star-cross’d lizards end their life; Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows Do with their death cause naught but zoo-wide strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And nomenclature far too wrongly right, Which none could have foreseen, by heav’n above, Is the newest post on tumblr’s stage tonight; The which, if you this blogger will indulge, Shall now the juicy details all divulge.
I used to volunteer at my local zoo and I got to work with the education animals. You know, the ones that zookeepers take around to schools and TV stations and malls and teach the public about animals and conservation. It was a sweet gig with lots of sweet animals. In particular, we had two Australian Shingleback Skinks we were working with: one
named Juliet and one named Romeo. People loved them, because they were super chill and felt really cool. They also made goofy noises. But mostly, they liked the names. They thought it was cute, but it was also apt (far too apt for reasons you’ll see in a moment); they were education animals, but they
were also a breeding pair.
Now, shinglebacks give birth to live young, and have a long gestation– about the same as humans. They only have one or two at a time, if they have them at all– they’re really picky about their mates. Juliet had come from another zoo, because she hated all the males they had in their zoo. But she matched with Romeo perfectly, and the other zoo allowed ours to keep her, in exchange for one of the first skinklings produced from the pairing. She had lost her first clutch, which sent her into a depression she barely made it out of, but after a year or so, she was pregnant again and coming along well. She was getting close to term, too. That means it was time to build a birthing nest. And unfortunately, Juliet wanted
to do that OUTSIDE of her tank.
One day she hurt herself while trying to
escape the tank, and she had to go see the vet. He decided that while
he was at it, he should go ahead and do some tests to make sure she was
healthy with her babies, since she’d lost that clutch before. Well, he spotted something funny in her bloodwork, and it ended up that she was sick. So he had to keep her for a longer time than expected. Now, these skinks are sensitive, and, as I said earlier, picky about their mates. Juliet started getting separation anxiety from being away from Romeo for so long. She stopped eating, and the stress was making her pregnancy more rocky. So even though she wasn’t fully well, the vet decided to let her go home, for the sake of her mental health. So she came home, and…
Romeo was dead. He had evidently thought she was never coming back, got depressed just like she did, and died; but all this happened before the zoo staff could notice something was wrong. He was fine one day, and then the next he was dead. Autopsy showed nothing wrong physically, so we can only guess it was just a broken heart, from pining after his long-lost lover. And poor Juliet couldn’t take the stress from being so sick and in some strange place with needles and scary vet-man and all that nasty medicine, and then finally coming home and not having her Romeo waiting for her, so she died too, babies and all.
Moral of the story: always send your husband-lizard WITH the wife-lizard when she goes to the doctor, or your lizards will become a case study in Shakespearean Irony.
Reblogging from myself because I worked way too hard on that gosh dang prologue and selfishly want it to get noticed.
