Weeks of skill saws buzzing, screws turning, hammers banging, throwing things, paint slathering, fist pumping, and X number of runs to Home Depot, (aka Manland) went by. Finally, Kaiju Tegu's enlcosure is ... done. Finally we get our house back. "Complications" did arise however. My adult autistic son, decided at the last minute that he wanted to move into our large library/animal room. I had to say yes. He pays rent and my other son who pays the same rent, has a larger room. Great. Now I had to figure out how to move my large library/animal room into a smaller room... and then cut that into, not a quarter as previously thought, but in half! You heard right. We came to find that the cage takes up nearly half of an entire room. The upside is if the three men in the house misbehave, the "white coffin" is large enough for all of them. There is space for a tea party for them, in fact. The next obstacle was cost. Now I had looked for blue prints, tips, and materials lists for how to build this thing for months. I had saved pages of information and photos. "It's easy to build", they said. "It doesn't cost much money", they said. Well ... it's not easy to build when all you've constructed in life hasn't been much more than a small card house or a Walmart end table. As previously stated in another entry, the cost was ... a little shocking. This wasn't just because of materials being costly in my area. This is because we are fairly new home owners and are on an extremely tight budget. There are few tools in our garage. We don't even have electrical tape laying around. There's a measuring tape! That helps, right? I have no idea how much this thing cost? But I will feel guilty til the end of time about it, not to mention if this tegu thingy doesn't calm down and warm up with maturity, my husband who's blood, sweat and tears (literally) were spent over this, won't get a thing out of it all.
The upside is it was a good father-son project. It really was. I had fun tagging along to Manland and picking up a coke and candy bar each time. I was easily bored when they'd search for what ever they needed and would talk to other forelorn looking women tagging along with their husbands as well. "Isn't it just a beautiful day? Oh I see you're stuck here too, huh. Nnnt, oh these men, am I right?" Both rooms got gutted out and a wall to wall cleaning for the first time since we've owned the house. Now that part was awesome. Trying to walk through the living room and find a place to sit for almost two weeks, not so much. Seeing my husbands eyes bulge and blood vessels break every time a cost was added? Horrible.
The whole experience was nerve wracking quite frankly. When I put together my bearded dragon enclosure everyone had a standard mental blueprint for a beginner. Down to what brand and watt of light bulb to use and where to buy it. It was that specific. So when they stated the cost, it was what they said. When they said what it would be like to put together ... it was what they said. Tegu enclosure advice is all over the board. It'd be nice if there were two popular blue prints with directions and an exact, detailed materials list (and where to get them) available. One for the poor man who's only experience in putting anything together is hanging Christmas lights, and one for those who want a good solid basic enclosure that is a blank slate you can modify and let your imagination run wild. I'm a "girl". So when you say you need a screw, you better tell me what kind, what size, what brand, how much, and where to get it. End of story. In the end things went well. The hillbilly from across the street checked in a couple of times in support of my husband. A husband who was building a palace for his wife's giant lizard. One you don't eat. He was quite confused ... and amused
When we finished it was awesome. Great attention had been given to every detail. Will this rub the lizard wrong, will this over stimulate her, is the heat source the right distance from the basking spot, what size UVB is sufficient, is every micrometer of the inside of the cage sealed with a pool sealant and then caulk? The details that needed tending to were never ending. I learned new vocab. I didn't know what VOC was in regards to paint before all of this. Apparently it's a bad thing. Especially for animals. You want zero or low VOC. Yup. I won't go into what it is because it's a very complex thing and I don't want to bore you with my new found awesome knowledge. Google it.
And so we finished it. Life could get back to normal. For the last few months Kaiju has been living in my bathroom in a weird make shift set up. When you opened the door, a cloud steam would spill out onto the floor from the vaporizer no less then it does for a Kiss concert. It was a feat to keep the humidity at a somewhat acceptable range and not have the paint fall off the walls. Kaiju hated the whole experience. She knew big things were happening on the other side of the door. So her eating slowed way down and she became less active. Her training also nearly plateaued. It was worrisome. She has been eating "some" since being introduced into the new cage. Hopefully things will become normal for her too ... as they now are for us.
We're normal. What?!