The events of today ( cleaning out Wednesday's fish tank etc ) got me thinking ( always a bad sign) and after a lot of thought and careful introspection , I have come to the conclusion that she may in fact come by her ' tendencies ' naturally. ( at least somewhat ) explanation of this theory requires a little trip back in time , to Wilbur Oklahoma , in the early 80's . . . Fasten your seat belts , it's gonna be a creepy trip.
I was quite the tomboy growing up. Most of my classmates from back then have vivid recollections of me bringing frog eggs and tadpoles from our pond as well as lizards I had caught and snakes to class for show and tell. For some reason I seemed to have a knack for those " critters" , my room looked like a small wild animal hospital and my Mother used to tease me and call me " Ellie Mae" . Then one day , she took me and B.S to the pet store and I became enamoured with small furry creatures. Each of us left that day with our very first gerbil . Mine was named Tempelton , B.S named hers Pepe . Pepe was meaner than a damn snake and bit everything that touched her , so she rarely ever left her cage (until the day an enterprising house cat figured out how to open the cage and made a tasty snack of Pepe ) . Tempelton did well , he was gentle and sweet , and I enjoyed reading about gerbils and their natural habitats. I learned that most gerbils lived in burrows, so I went to the back of our acreage and ate to work digging a lovely tunnel and burrow system for my baby. Sadly , 6-7 year olds make very poor architect 's , and about a minute after I put him down in the burrow, it caved in on him. Bye bye Tempelton.
Since B.S and I had both lost our gerbils by then , our kind-hearted ( or possibly crazy ?) Mother took us back to the pet store and gave us another chance. This time we got matching Gerbils , we named them Chip and dale . Chip and dale did well until the day we decided to take them swimming in the swimming pool with us . We had the best time making them dive into the water and swim to the bottom of the pool and then up again, until eventually they just sort of floated to the surface . That was the day we learned that gerbils need oxygen too , and by the way , really aren't the best swimmers . . .
Next trip to the pet store yielded a hamster named Ernie-bob ( so named because Mother had refused to pay for two animals again so we had to share him and each had our own ideas about his name, ever the diplomat , Mom suggested a hyphenated name, and it worked ) we loved playing with Ernie-Bob , as it turns out , so did the cat. We accidentally left him in our my little pony castle when we went to the city to see the Flintstone's movie, when we came back , there were tufts of hamster hair EVERYWHERE, but alas, no hamster.
After this there was an unfortunate pair of birds named tweety and Sylvester . We just couldn't seem to keep our little fingers out of the cage , and surprise , surprise , they too became cat fodder.
It must have been about this time that Mother realized she had bred a couple of small animal serial killers, because I don't remember any more pets of the small caged variety until we were significantly older
Perhaps this bad luck killer instinct is genetic ? Maybe Wednesday isn't really a fish-killer ? Maybe she's just from our polluted gene pool ? Or perhaps some voodoo witch doctor put a curse on my great grandpa that if we touch a small animal it will die ? That sounds ludicrous , but just to be safe , if you have a gerbil and you love it , whatever you do, don't let anyone from my gene pool pet it , or play with it in any way .
There should be a warning poster about our family in every petsmart .
Honestly , I'm a little surprised that PETA isn't camping on my lawn as I doodle this out .
By the time I was out of grAde school and we sold the house , there was a pet cemetery like you wouldn't believe in Moms flower bed .
I wonder what the new owers thought ? Did they find it ? Inquiring minds want to know . . .
1 comment:
Post a Comment