Some sad news and a sketch

Should we have the sad news first?  I think we maybe should.  Yesterday I found one of my little baby crested geckos dead, I called it (for I don't know if it was a boy or a girl) 'Lemon' and it was one of my first clutch to hatch and one of the three babies from May.  There's a nice little story that goes with Lemon's hatching that I'll tell you now.   I incubate my crestie eggs in a polybox at room temperature without any additional heating but due to an unfortunate series of events, the three eggs in my incubator in November got soft boiled (when I went to check them one morning I found the temperature in the polybox read nearly 55 degrees Celsius) and I naturally assumed they had been kill but I never threw the eggs out because it would have really upset my mother (who initiated the chain of events leading to the soft boiling) so they just sat there for months.  Then on Christmas Eve I received a phone call from my mother, who was gecko sitting whilst I was away for Christmas, saying she had found them hatched but not looking too alive due to nobody really bothering to check on them because we assumed they were dead.  I advised her to spray them immediately and they started to come round, apparently one had some shed stuck to it, which she removed and they both went on to do surprisingly well.  Lemon always had a few shedding problems but I didn't think too much of it.  All my geckos are pretty slow growing on account of them being fed mostly Crested Gecko Diet, which is perfectly fine.  I really don't know why Lemon died, he dropped his tail on Monday for no apparent reason so maybe he was sick or possibly the incident during incubation means he always had something wrong with him, it is just very sad to have had him hatch and live nearly six months only to die suddenly.  RIP little Lemon, you will be missed.

In less depressing news, my feature yesterday of Teal Stripes' work has inspired me to do a little bit of sketching.  Now you'll remember I said it's something I'm not good at so please excuse the quality but I thought I'd share this little cat drawing with you.  I might even do some painting later if I'm feeling brave.

I've got more features lined up for next week.  I'd also like to share a little of my photography with you so that's to come as well.  If you have a preference or there's something in particular you'd like to see let me know.