Ziggy’s day off

"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller

1986 was a big year

The popular teen movie Ferris Bueller’s day off came out a month after I started my first corporate job in 1986, the year after the Rubicon speech, at a time of peak political unrest and violence in South Africa. That year I also got married, and bought a house, all while the country was falling apart. I was unthwarted in my youthful optimism. The movie’s frivolousness and excesses were as incongruous and as entertaining an escape as many movies have always been against the backdrop of a world that always seems to be immersed in some kind of terrible turmoil somewhere.

It is the story of a teen and his two accomplices who skip school. They are suffering from senioritis, the loss of motivation to grow up and become a responsible adult that can happen at any point, even after you have already become an adult, but is most common among students approaching the end of their studies (poetic license liberally applied here). In true American cinematic fashion, they bunk in a vintage Ferrari and the day is filled with a variety of adventures, including a visit to the Chicago Stock Exchange and gatecrashing a parade in honour of Steuben, a German born officer credited for improving the performance of the American Army in the 1700s. Oh, the irony.

When lipreading was a secret weapon

I had my first visit to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that year too, when open outcry was still a thing, and the ability to lipread and good eyesight a prized combination. There is a story about a prominent person in the Financial Services industry in South Africa who got his first job at the Exchange in the nineties because he could figure out the other brokers’ order books and pre-empt them by calling his own clients first, thanks to hearing impaired parents who taught him to sign and lipread. Probably part legend, but a good story nonetheless. It was a different time, fewer rules, I suppose. Those skills are meaningless in the digital trading world of today, and as humans sometimes do, this son of two deaf parents successfully evolved with the industry and thrived. But, I digress.

This piece is about an escape, a 48-hour long pass that ended well, unlike that of Ferris Bueller’s 11-hour one. While Ferris came away unscathed and with his infraction undiscovered, he wrecked the Ferrari (of course he did) and his friend Cameron took the fall, so all did not end well for everyone, despite the happy ending on film. But unlike Ferris’s day with all his musings, many details of Ziggy’s adventure will remain undocumented, unwitnessed, and live on in my imagination only.

It happened that I spent the holiday-infused month of April in a slightly less orderly, uncluttered way than normal. Apart from my two cats and two dogs, one of which is a new adoptee who still needs to learn how to read the feline room, despite a frequent bloody nose, I was host to a family of four and petsitter to two more cats, who are not fond of me at all despite the Pavlovian association with kibble twice a day coming from my hand, and Ziggy.

The added complication was that my cats and dogs do not get on with the other two cats. And, despite the new dog’s fervent efforts at begging to be loved, much like a Notting Hill character, and equally nauseating, my cats are still fighting with him. Then there is Ziggy. Ziggy most definitely needs to be kept apart from all the other animals, especially the cats.

Living in a submarine

For a few weeks there, it was like living in a submarine, or perhaps an old-fashioned high security prison. Cells were not to be confused, doors had to be closed in just the right sequence, and kept that way. All available beds were taken, and two teenagers had to share a room with Ziggy.

Ziggy is a reptile. I am hazy on the exact type, but something in the lizard or gecko family. He has no tail, which makes him look like a grumpy, stocky middle-aged man with jowls, who likes to hide in a log. In a certain light, he looks a little exotic (don’t we all). He is the soft green of a Thule backpack I once had my eye on. It is a good colour, attractive on a bag and a lizard.

His redeeming features are that he only needs to be fed every few days, but he does need to be hydrated daily. Not exactly high care, but the whole situation feels a bit one-sided with him just sitting on, or inside his log, looking at me with his bulging eyes. Sometimes he sticks his tongue out, but I never know whether it is intentional or instinctive.

Nevertheless, I take my duties as pet carer and host very seriously. And it was all going well, until the Friday after Easter weekend. There was a crowd coming over for dinner, and to add to the already busy day, two of the cats brought in birds that they managed to catch, much to my dismay, despite the bells on their collars. This of course necessitated some deep cleaning of bits of bird and feathers, which can take up a lot more space than one could imagine. And it caused a slight relaxation around opening and closing doors. The submarine routines were disturbed.

It all goes wrong

At some point a cat was hastily chased from the lizard room, and no one noticed the small opening made by its tapdancing efforts on the mesh roof of the lizard enclosure, presumably while Ziggy hid in his many hiding places. Everyone was just relieved that he did not meet the same fate as the birds and closed the door.

It was on the Saturday morning that we noticed Ziggy’s absence, at first thinking that his propensity for being antisocial just had him hiding with even more skill than usual. We made sure Alcatraz was locked down and started looking. The number of places that a lizard can hide in the average cluttered multi-purpose room is astonishingly many, especially if the walls are lined with books.

A few hours of searching and the big guns had to come out. Technology, patience and cunning. Lizards can live for a few days without food and water according to an online search, but we could not dawdle. Ziggy had to be found.

We started moving everything that was not a fixture, leaving no book or empty box unturned. Somewhere in between turning books and lifting furniture I started vacuuming areas that had not seen a cleaning appliance for some time. I mean, that was a natural thing to do, multi-tasking by searching for a reptile while dusting, wasn’t it?

Book surfing

We tilted each book, shining a phone torch behind each section. The teenagers even filmed the spaces behind the books. They are in alphabetical order (do not ask) and I had visions of Ziggy leaping from behind Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (maybe he wanted to read about the hybridized animals) to John Douglas’ Mindhunter (I could have done with some of his skills), with a lateral progression to Roddy Doyle’s Commitments, which came out the year after the Ferris movie.

On he would crawl, at leisurely pace, to John Grisham’s Rainmaker and Ernst Grundling’s Koshuis, while I teetered on a ladder with a phone torch in one hand, carefully pulling out edition after edition with the other, wondering if I will ever have time to read more than a small percentage of them, or survive a fall.

Saturday’s search fruitless, I added to the arsenal with a highly sensitive motion detection camera (always knew it would come in handy) and two humane traps with his favourite apricot mush. I did not ask how anyone knew it was his favourite. It was not the day for that kind of argument. I briefly wondered if the traps could go into the dishwasher.

Still taking online advice, I took my houseplants and placed a few of them close to the now open doors to his enclosure, to lure him back in. As I am writing this, the ludicrousness of it all is hitting home. But, there is more.

When I woke at three o’clock on Sunday morning, it was not water I reached for. It was the headlamp that I got in a secret Santa round a few years ago. Someone online said that lizards are more likely to move around at night, so this time I was teetering on a ladder in the dark with a headlamp. And I had a choice to keep this all to myself.

Sunday was also taken up with more searching and an obligatory mini reorganisation of the room. By now the owner had been informed, and the extended family were on standby to come help.

Just get a replacement

It was a member of the family that offered to “just go to the pet shop, get another one and pull its tail off. A lot happens in three weeks, I mean he could look entirely different, trust me, I have been there.” I declined the offer, and will forever see her in a different light, one infused with a bit of trepidation and lot of suspicion.

Khaki goes with everything, even a lizard

I had to be on the road on Monday morning and somewhere about 30km from home, the motion detection camera started pinging. As luck would have it, two extended family members were on their way to see if some fresh eyes would help.

After two hours of tilting books, lifting and moving things, they spotted him sitting on a khaki green bag, perfectly still and camouflaged, less than a meter from his house. Safely back in his enclosure, which by now had been reinforced with Gaffers tape, he was clearly parched after his adventure and enjoyed a meal of orange coloured pulp and a lot of glass licking (that is how they drink, it sounds worse than it is).

There are no learnings from this experience other than you never know when you need a motion detection camera. Oh, and my immediate urgent reading list has just grown by at least ten books. Ziggy made me look at the treasures in the wall of books. That is the best thing that came out of his day off. I hope that Ziggy stopped and looked around for a while too during his wild weekend away. We all need to, from time to time.

PS. To those who know, the reptile’s name was changed, not forgotten. Promise.