At first things seemed all hunky dory when we took home this little bundle of joy.
I asked my wife what we should call him.
"Well I always dreamed of having a son and calling him Tristan."
I was well aware that she wanted a beautiful boy named Tristan. She even changed the password on the email account we share to "Tristan" and would talk endlessly about that name when we were trying to have a baby.
She went to all the trouble to paint our spare room baby blue for the day when we would be pregnant and young Tristan was on his way.
Sadly I was never able to give her the boy she wanted due to my... problem
"Tristan it is," I said
The next few weeks were a joy. I never knew I was capable of loving another creature the way I loved young Tristan.
And my wife was proud. At work she would regale her co-workers with stories of our little boy. "Tristan chipped his first claw today," she would say. She was so proud to be a mother.
We would take long trips to the store to buy crickets and toys for the cold blooded tot. It was a dream.
But after a couple of months, the honeymoon was over. Pretty soon Tristan began to be a headache.
It was really hard to get enough sleep with such a demanding lizard.
He needed wrangling.
At first my wife and I tried to share the wrangling duties to attempt to get some shut eye.
Sometimes we would have to let him sleep in the bed with us when he wouldn't get to sleep.
All of this was beginning to take a toll on me.
It was effecting my performance at work and my boss was upset.
"You were supposed to send that spreadsheet to me two weeks ago. One more slip up and you'll be summarily dismissed"
What's more, my wife's nursing job often required her to work the graveyard shift, forcing me to handle wrangling responsibilities all alone.
Tristan was getting bigger.
And his constant appetite for more and more bugs took a toll on my wallet.
He was also getting stronger.
As time went by it became abundantly clear that I wasn't strong enough to wrangle him.
Needless to say this was taking a toll on our marriage.
"Why can't you wrangle him!" My wife would scream.
"I can't, I said". "I'm not strong enough.
"Fine!" She said "We'll have to hire a wrangler ourselves. Guess we'll have to give up the cable".
"We'll make sacrifices, honey" I said. "But I know this will work out in the end. Now let's go to bed"
"No" she replied, cruelly "you'll sleep on the couch tonight".
The next morning we looked in the yellow pages for a live-in reptile wrangler.
"Hm, this guy seems good" I said. "Let's give him a shot".
"G'day mate. You said you are looking for a live-in reptile wrangler. I can start right away. Crickey!"
TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR PART 3