Hex is shedding his skin. It’s a very involved process. I’ve been checking up on him periodically and he seems to be getting through it okay. The first time I checked he had skin all over his face and it looked like he wouldn’t be able to breathe, but he’s got it off now. It’ll be a while before all of it’s off though, and it’s quite an intimate process so I reckon he won’t want my big face staring down at him through the hole in the world while he does it. I’ve left him to it. Tomorrow I’ll have some cleaning work to do in there.
First of all he soaks himself. Then he empties himself of liquid and has a gargantuan poo. Meanwhile he is generating heat and thrashing around so he steams up his terrarium. Then the long process of shrugging off all the dead skin, catching it on his rock and on his bits of crunched up paper. He flushes himself.
Tomorrow morning he’ll be snoozing, shiny and new and innocent, surrounded by the unbelievable carnage that he’s currently wreaking. He feels newborn when he’s just shed. So silky smooth. Sometimes he leaves the old skin in a perfect pile for me, sometimes it’s inextricably mixed up with his strange secretions. Even his wee looks like eggs. It’s weird looking after a snake.
I’ll find out what he’s left for me tomorrow. It’s a heck of a talent, changing yourself over like that. Tomorrow morning I’ll reward him with a puppet helicopter mouse to eat. It’s currently defrosting on the kitchen counter. He’ll likely be hungry after all the writhing. 3% magic, that mouse.
Maybe we are all Hex right now. Hiding under our rocks, rolling in our filth, scraping off the things we don’t need anymore and waiting for the morning when we can emerge brand spanking new, soft skinned, flushed out, empty clean and ready for all the tasty flying mice that will be shrieking “eat me eat me” as we stir from our torpor.
I’ve managed to organise a few little flying mice of my own for December. I hope you have too. Enough to make sure that I’m not going to the workhouse despite Christmas Carol being cancelled because it’ll almost certainly be illegal.
Right now though I’m still thrashing around in my own filth. Apart from the papers, I’ve got so much glassware to make sense of. I’ve got tons of other weird random objects to sort and move. It’s enough to be getting on with, certainly. But with everything else I’ve got to get on with it’s going to be a marathon to get the place lovely for Christmas.
But this is what I’m determined to do. So I shall, dammit.
Shiny new skins all round please. After the flush. ETA December.
AlBarclay 