#taako the axolotl
So Taako is a spectacularly picky axolotl, and he insists on a diet of live aquatic blackworms - like seriously, he won’t even go for red wigglers or nightcrawlers anymore (nor will Lup), even though he had no problem eating them right up until literally the day before the expensive worm farm I bought them was going to be delivered.
So, we have a routine now, wherein I gotta go to the local fish store once a week and buy a plastic baggie of three scoops of live blackworms for $8.50, which means that I spend approximately $442 dollars a year on worms.
It would be one thing if it was merely expensive, but there’s a second issue - this blackworm-only diet is wildly challenging to deal with when there’s a shortage or a shipment’s late at my LFS, which happens more than you’d think, since there’s like two commercial blackworm farmers that supply the entire country, and I can’t just do it myself because they’re basically impossible to cultivate in sufficient amounts at home.
Well, we haven’t been able to get blackworms for two weeks now and my disgusting tupperware container of stinky tiny worms that I keep in a really really small minifridge (because of fucking course my axolotls have their own minifridge) has been entirely emptied. So, I returned to my old scheme to keep this dummy alive and healthy.
See, I have been trying for YEARS now to convince him to just… just TRY eating one axolotl pellet. He has no reason not to like them. They are especially designed for him. I am sure that, as healthy as blackworms are, they are a more complete diet for him. I have purchased several different brands at no small expense. He has not even considered eating one…
Until today, when I tricked him by turning all the lights off but one, announced “Taako, buddy, you want some worms????” in the same tone I do every time I’m about to plop some worms in there, and then under cover of darkness, I gaslit him into thinking the falling object was his normal meal of tiny disgusting writhing worms, and he didn’t notice that he’d been bamboozled until it was much too late for him to correct course.
It’s been half an hour. He still hasn’t swallowed. He just keeps doing… whatever THIS is:
He’s never gonna forgive me, is he?
