Editor’s Note: This column is a part of a series called “I’m hyperfocusing on…”.

My boyfriend and I adopted our first pet together June 24. Yes, he was our pandemic project. Yes, he was an impulse purchase. Yes, he is spoiled, but I feel like it’s justified. Keep reading to find out why.

Cole and I went to a small-town pet store looking for something to take care of. We had a tank at home and figured some fish would do quite nicely. We walked around for a while and picked out our favorites. A pop-eyed goldfish that was blind, a crab that had lost its claws to the larger crabs and a few other disadvantaged individuals caught our eye.

When we went to buy the fish, we were told that seasoning the tank for the fish takes a couple months before we can bring them home if we want them to live. Then they took us over to the reptiles, where they had a crested gecko, a veiled chameleon and a leopard gecko. The crested gecko and veiled chameleon had identical enclosures: a small tank with a layer of soil on the bottom, some fake plants for greenery and a large rock for climbing. They all had crickets crawling on the ground and a water dish on the floor. There was also a heat lamp on top of each enclosure.

We had been looking at the chameleon for a while, and began asking questions about him. We were told that he was super easy to take care of but “a real big jerk.” After discussing for a while, we decided we wanted to make the jump. The worker put on a thick leather glove, grabbed the chameleon roughly and stuffed him in a cardboard box. I paid for 100 crickets and the chameleon. We decided his name was Spock, and on the way home, I began researching.

We set him up with the best we could do based on what we were told but found that it wasn’t what he needed. We got rid of the water dish the first night after learning that chameleons need running water because they can’t see it if it’s stagnant. The next day we went to work. Cole went to the city to buy any supplies he could find, and I fed Spock, found him proper branches, created a DIY water dripper and placed orders for any supplies Cole couldn’t find in stores.

I remember crying on the front steps the first day he drank water for us. We’d gone through several DIY water drippers over the course of five days, and although he never could figure out how to use them, he did notice that when I held one of them from the bottle, water would come out, and he climbed up around the bottle and held on.

I got a plastic syringe, filled it with water and let out a drop. He immediately started drinking, and after the syringe was empty, he continued to sit there with his mouth open. I gave him water until he was done and realized just how dehydrated he’d been. His casque, which is the triangular crown on his head used to store moisture, had been completely sunken in. We kept a close eye on him so when he held onto the bottle we could give him more water until we had a better device.

Cole went to work on a custom enclosure, which ended up being 2 by 4 by 6 feet with a grated drawer on the bottom, meaning we don’t have to bother him to clean. This was a huge step up from the 2 by 1 by 1 that he’d been in and also larger than the necessary 2 by 2 by 4. Within a couple weeks, he was moved into this enclosure, complete with lots of plants, a food dish so he knows where to find his crickets, a water dripper, a heat lamp and a UVB bulb. The walls are made of window screen to protect his fragile respiratory system from infection, and we have a humidifier outside the enclosure to keep his humidity up where it needs to be.

We’ve since noticed that Spock is stunted in growth and has misshapen ribs. The stunting is from living in an enclosure that is too small with his previous owner, and the rib shape is from metabolic bone disease, a result of improper UVB light to synthesize dietary calcium. We can’t ever undo these issues, but we’ve made sure to address them to keep him healthy moving forward.

My chameleon gets a bad reputation amongst people that know him. He’s picky about colors, he has a nasty attitude sometimes and he can be difficult to take care of. Despite all of this, he’s incredibly smart and resilient, and given the chance to go back, I’d still spoil him just as much.