By Car Johnson
I decided to give up on fried porcupines and the whole farm idea. I’m just not cut out for it. Animals and I don’t mix. Every pet I’ve ever had has been a source of problems. Even my goldfish. Goldy tried to run away on thirty-three separate occasions. Of course, there isn’t much a goldfish can do outside of his bowl, so I could just stick him back inside. (I eventually gave him to my cousin Joe’s little boy.) That was the best experience I’ve ever had with a pet.
I got my first pet when I was eight. Uncle Frank brought home a crocodile from his trip to the Florida Everglades. I really wish he had brought back a baby. This guy was six feet long! It chased me up a tree and animal control had to come and remove it. After that, my mother banned any type of animal from the house. I had to think small if I wanted to sneak pets inside.
There were plenty of worms in the garden, so I got an old shoebox, filled it with dirt and went outside to collect my new friends. I kept them under my bed and took them out to play. This lasted for about three weeks, until I took them out to play tea party with my sister, Carol. She screamed and told mother about my secret pets.
Mother took my worms and headed straight to the trash. I begged her not to throw them out, but she informed me that they were dead. I thought they were sleeping. I figured turning dry and brittle was just their way of preparing for the Summer. (I got back at my sister by switching her pet rock with one of those hid-a-keys.)
Now that my worms were gone, I had to go find some other animal to sneak in. I collected a jar of mosquitoes and stuck them in my closet. I wasn’t going to let my pets die this time, so I let them out to go hunt for some food. They swarmed around the room and attacked me. I opened my window and de-invited them as my new pets.
My mother questioned me about all the bites, but I told her that I had snuck outside during the night to see how many mosquito bites I could get. She bought it, but only because I had done the same thing a week before with the scorpions that lived in our woodpile.
Next, I decided to make a pet out of something already in the house. We had plenty of roaches scampering about and no one would ever miss a couple. I took a strip of flypaper and set some meat on it and waited for a roach to take the bait. After one got stuck, I took the paper and placed it on my desk and fed the little all the parts of my dinner I didn’t like and anything else I could manage to scrounge up.
It worked out pretty well, at least until the other roaches came. (How was I supposed to know a small mountain of meatloaf and stale cupcakes was too much for one roach to eat?) And the food didn’t just attract roaches. Ants, rats and some neighborhood cats decided to take over my room. It took an exterminator six months to get everything pest free and they had to wait until Animal Control had gotten all the cats out.
I stayed away from insects after that. I was lucky to find a sleeping skunk outside my window. Well, I thought he was sleeping. I swore off pets after that. If mother didn’t want animals inside her home, who was I to question her wisdom?
I didn’t get another pet until I was out on my own. I got a dog. A good old dependable dog. At least I think it was a dog. It looked more like an enormous ball of black dreadlocks with the head of some sort of bear. I named him Rupert. Rupert loved to eat. He ate soap, he ate my clothes: he even managed to eat my bed.
The only thing he wouldn’t eat was dog food. He turned his nose up at every brand of dog food in existence and would only eat ground up prime beef and organic mashed carrots. Quite a picky eater for someone who thought the toilet was a mug and the garbage was his own personal buffet.
Still, he was a lovable ball of whatever. We had fun rolling in the mud together and sniffing around for stray bits of Cheetos crumbs. It wasn’t until he attempted to eat my cow fetus collection that I decided he needed a new home. Good thing my mother had changed her mind about pets. She gladly welcomed him into her home, and even set up a room filled with plenty of furniture for him to destroy. I felt a little miffed that she used my old room, but at least she didn’t use it for target practice like she did my sister’s.
Nowadays, I just use my cow fetuses as pets. There’s something special about having a pet that can’t move, eat or make any sort of annoying noise. I can lavish all my love on Bessie and the rest and no matter what, they won’t ever run away, bite, or eat my silverware. I can tell them my secrets, my fears, and my dreams, and not only will they never judge me, they won’t pee on the carpet.
I only wish I can find a woman that I can have the same type of relationship with. Of course, I wouldn’t want her to just sit there and be silent like my cow fetuses. I want a woman who can give as well as take. I want to hear her hopes, dreams and fears too. And if she really is the right woman for me, she can pee on the carpet all she wants.
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Wanna talk to Car? Email him at: Car_Johnson_Rocks@hotmail.com
