Lizard+Page

=Our babies...Spike and Liz=

The grade 6 class at KCS has worked very hard to raise money for our pet lizard. We were very happy to have a male Armadillo Lizard, named Prince Will. On November 16, our lives were ROCKED when we realized that there was a baby - no two babies - in our lizard's terrarium. This led to several discoveries about Armadillo lizards. The first of which was that our lizard was a female and she was pregnant when we bought her! No wonder we worried that "he" was getting fat!

Unfortunately, our mama lizard, renamed Princess Williana, died 9 days after giving birth. We speculate it was stress from the birth and/or old age. She had twins, but it is documented that Armadillo lizards have only one baby at a time. We will miss her dearly. The babies are doing well and we will continue to write about them.

Spike - our "watch dog"
Spike is the bigger of the two lizards and is always the first at the food dish in the mornings. He also loves to hang on the top of the cage and bask in the glow of the heat lamps. Spike loves people and is always out and about in the terrarium, watching what is going on. He will follow you from one end of the tank to the other and seems genuinely interested in what is going on.

Some funny stories:
 * When Spike ate SOOOO much he couldn't stand on all 4 legs...watch out for those crickets!!
 * Spike slept at the top of a plant for two straight days...Mrs. Sherwin worried we might have another funeral.
 * March 2008 - Spike spent the Feb break with a boy in my class. They spent a lot of time together and Spike was VERY docile when he returned. It was nice to hold him.

Liz - the "hermit"
Liz is quite the opposite of Spike. She is smaller and very nervous around people. The only time you will see her is if you come into the empty classroom after recess and you catch her quickly running into her cave. It may be the reason for her size...she has to wait until the room is empty to eat, and by then Spike has had half her food! When not in her cave, she is under the lights, or in the plants. When she does come out to watch, she will stand up the the corner of the tanks and rest on her tail.

Interesting tidbits:
 * Liz's tail got bent over Christmas...were she and Spike fighting over food?
 * Liz's tail did end up falling off...her new nickname is stubby
 * Liz's tail started growing back over Feb break. The first day back at school it was bleeding and looked painful, but is doing much better now.

February 5 - Liz is getting more comfortable with the people in the classroom. She is often the one out now when I come in to work in the morning.


 * Lizard growth chart:**

Born November 16, 2007 We can't weigh the lizards as the school doesn't have a scale that is accurate enough - all we know is that they are less than 10 grams

The lizards both shed over Christmas and again over February break. They are getting bigger.

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Spike went home with Colton as he won the Lizard Lottery
 * A New Home for the Lizards**

Liz came home with Mrs. Sherwin. She is doing well and is still super shy.

A great story written my one of the grade 6 students. This story was performed at Music Festival.

__The Class Pet__ by Matthew

Once upon a time, long, long ago in a land far, far away. . . well, maybe not so long ago or so far away. It all started last September in Kerrobert Composite School. I remember it like it was yesterday, September 22nd, 2007. The grade six class was voting on a class pet. The choices were: A) a fish, B) a lizard, C) a tarantula, or D) none of the above. 15% of the class wanted a cute, cuddly fish. 14% of the class wanted a creepy, crawly tarantula. 1% of the class didn’t like any of the choices. The rest of the class had their hearts set on getting a lizard so our teacher, Mrs. Sherwin, went to Saskatoon and bought an armadillo lizard. The first thing we had to do when the lizard arrived in our class room Monday morning, was to give him a name. The two most popular suggestions were ‘Prince Charles’ and ‘William’. After the vote, it was a tie. Unfortunately for those of us that didn’t like ‘Prince Charles’ as a name, we had to combine the two names to come up with ‘Prince Will’. Prince Will was a great class pet because he couldn’t kill you with his bite like a tarantula or splash you like a fish. But along with him came a nice sized price tag. Mrs. Sherwin informed us that we had a $395.00 debt to repay her. How were we going to do that? We were just a group of grade six kids with no paying jobs. Mrs. Sherwin had no fears however. She signed us up to work in the school booth and arranged for us to sell ice-cream floats to the rest of the student body. We worked so hard that before long we had repaid the debt. We even made more money than we needed so Prince Will could eat like a king. . . well, maybe just a prince. He ate so much in fact, that he started to get fat. So, we put him on a diet. No more wax worms for him! He was on this strict diet for two weeks until. . . one Friday afternoon during our silent reading class our teacher let out a spine-tingling screech. ‘Ahhhhh.’ ‘What was the matter?’ we all thought. That’s when she told us that there were two baby lizards in the cage. That left us with only one conclusion. . . Prince Will was a girl! The first order of business was to come up with some new names. Prince Will became Princess Wilhelmina and the two babies became Spike and Liz. The grade six class pet turned into class pets. Cool! It was going to be an interesting year.