We went fishing on Saturday. We had to walk through some kind of jungle to get to the place where we were going to put in our float tubes, but once we got there, everything was good. Only for about 15 seconds, though. I was the first one in, and neglected to become familiar with my equipment before jumping in like a dumbass.

The first thing I noticed was that the cold water caused the air in the tube keeping me afloat to lose volume, thus displacing less water, ergo…vis-à-vis…I started to sink.

In prompt reaction to this minor emergency I set my rod down across the tube, firmly embedding a treble hook in my floatation device. This pissed me off to a considerable extent, and then I heard Chad yelling obscenities about a spider web tangling his line. As I was fighting the current and trying to find a place shallow enough to stand up, I forcefully dislodged the hook (thankfully not piercing the tube, but only tearing the nylon covering a bit and breaking one of the hooks off) and instead embedded it in the first knuckle of my right hand. “Arrgh damn zamshit”, I complained. I just sort of jerked the hook out because I am both tough AND dumb. The blood attracted a bunch of sharks, which ate my brother and bit off my left foot.

Wait. Getting a little off track.

I had now sunk low enough that I was getting 45 degree water in my chest waders, and becoming both concerned for my enjoyment of this trip, and increasingly agitated. My knuckle looked like it was going to survive, and I finally found a foothold. Chad had gotten a spider web all tangled in his leader, and when it got wet it just turned into goo. Now he had to re-tie everything on his line, and was making up new swear words. If you have ever tried to re-tie anything on a fly rod while floating in a river in a tube, you understand his misery. My tube was about 50% deflated, and the inflation valve is located under my right arm in a pocket. It is not the kind of valve that is designed (or placed) to be easy to inflate by mouth. Since I was all strapped into this thing, I had to sort of twist my body and bend crosswise to get my slobberhole down to the valve. As I was all hunched over, making heavy breathing noises and giving the valve the what-for, my brother floats by and says “Hey…you’re pretty good at that. Looks like you’ve done it before.”

He’s really a funny guy.

For the first hour, I thought I was going to have to re-inflate my tube every ten minutes because I thought I had punctured it with the fishhook. I was gearing up to be a whiny bitch for the next six hours. Fortunately, on the third valvejob, I closed it a different way and that seemed to fix el problemo.

We fished our brains out for about six hours, caught some nice fish (yes, we let them go. The Chattahoochee is basically a moving toilet bowl. They don’t recommend you eat the fish.), and came out sunburned and tired. Chad is enchanted or something. He’s one of those guys you fish with who can always catch something, even if no one else can. So my brother and I beat him up and took his tackle.

After we got home, my brother and I went to pick up the newest addition to chez Dusty. I’ve had my eye on this guy for a couple of weeks, so I finally picked him up.

What the hell? Am I just attracted to the world’s weirdest looking pets, or what? A small male veiled chameleon. In my opinion the single most interesting reptile on the planet. I built him an enclosure a month or so ago, and now he resides there. Pimpin’ like a rap star. The cage is 4’x 3’ x 18”, so he has plenty of room to cruise around, climb on vines, and practice looking like a leaf. My guess is that he’s about 3 months old. He is about 7” from nose to tail, and should grow to a max of 20” or so.

Check it out. His own jungle.

75-90 degrees, depending where he chooses to hang out, 65-75% humidity, a night basking heat source, and I’m working on a way to make it rain in there twice a day on a timer. The cool part is that I can leave my back door open, and when the bajillions of insects come in, they are attracted to the UV light in his cage, where they are instantly devoured. If you look closely, you might be able to see some tiny cricket legs sticking out of his mouth, as he had just eaten when I snapped the pic.

Oh yeah. The Ladyfriend named him Booger. When he’s all grown up, Booger will look like this:

So now I have pets named Booger and Queasy. Does it get any better?

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