This success story is two years and a lot of effort in the making, but the good news is:

I FOUND AN EGG! I FOUND AN EGG!

To be fair, I found far more than one (at this point), but allow me to digress.

Back in 2013 before Pokemon X released, I was having a discussion with my friend Grunts about adorable creatures. One that we spent a decent amount of time talking about (both then, and in the interim) was the pangolin.

The pangolin is a glorious creature. They look a bit like a mobile artichoke. Just look at all those keratin scales!

(For more information on pangolins, check out the Wikipedia page here.)

So Grunts and I are talking about the glory that is the pangolin, and we both came up with video game instances where they (sort of) show up.

In Borderlands, there is a brand of shield called Pangolin. Those shields reduced your maximum health in exchange for an abnormally large shield.

Grunts told me there were two Pokemon that were basically pangolin: Sandslash and Sandshrew.

Well oh my gosh.

I looked up images of those Pokemon and lost it. They are adorable. I found plenty of fan art out there that was even more adorable.

So fast forward a bit to when Pokemon X released. I made it my goal to catch a Sandshrew and Sandslash. But it wasn’t that easy. I’d never played a Pokemon game before and I didn’t know the ins and outs of how all this worked. I love game guides but the particular one I have for Pokemon X wasn’t much help in finding where the wild Sandcreatures were.

This, my friends, is a Sandslash.

I finally found where they were, or rather, Grunts clued me in to where I could find them, I just had to progress much further in the game.

As I’ve written about previously, I put aside Pokemon X (mid-game) nearly two years ago before diving back in last month. So until two nights ago, I never encountered a wild Sandslash. But let me tell you, in the meantime, I had gotten ready. I had the False Swipe set up on one of my Pokemon to make catching the Sandslash easier, I had my Luxury Pokeballs ready so we could make friends faster.

I.

Was.

Ready.

But again, I have to digress (sorry!).

This is a Sandshrew. I had also wanted to catch one in a great big way. But Grunts found out you couldn’t catch one. You had to breed one.

What now? This game wants me to breed these creatures?

That felt very weird.

Well needless to say, since I hadn’t ever caught a Sandslash, I couldn’t very well breed them to create a Sandshrew.

It was more complicated than I was expecting.

So, after two years of all this buildup, all the hopes and dreams of a Sandbrood, I finally caught my first Sandslash. It was a glorious moment! Shwoomp he went, right into his Luxury Pokeball. But that wasn’t the hardest part: finding a female turned out to be the hardest part.

Pokemon have genders, and all I seemed to find were males. I found five males before I finally found a female. As you might expect, I had to have one of each gender to send to the Day Care Center. I chose the very best male I had and paired him with the female and left them to…do whatever they were going to do.

And, as I was on my way to the Battle Chateau to level up one of my newfound Sandslashes, the gentleman outside the Day Care told me my Sandcouple had produced an egg!

An egg!

So I gleefully picked up the egg and realized I had no idea what to do with it. Did I put it with my other stored Pokemon? Did I carry it around with me? I was lost.

I looked it up and found out you had to carry it with you while you tooled around the country until it hatched. So I roller skated back and forth in front of the Battle Chateau, over and over, until things started to change.

At long last, I received the notification that my egg was hatching! The excitement!

And then, I finally got to meet my little Sandshrew. A beautiful moment two years in the making. And if it hadn’t been for Grunts, I never would have known how to do this at all.

And there you have the long, drawn out, complicated story of how I finally, finally found an egg.

And, subsequently, my little Sandshrew.

Have you ever spent a ridiculous amount of time in a game getting something to happen? If so, what was it? I’d love to hear about it!

And with that, off I go to feed my little Sandshrew some Pokepuffs. Cheers, friends!