Our two oldest kids, 10 and 7 have been wanting a pet for a while now. They would love to have a dog but we shot that idea down real quick. Our excuse always being that we don’t have a fenced in yard and therefore can’t possibly get a dog until we get a home with a fenced in yard. (Our real reason was that we didn’t need another “kid” to take care of and we both can’t take the barking, smelling, etc. that comes with a new dog.) The girls have bought the excuse of not having a fence for a couple of years now but they are getting smarter and starting to wear us down. Nina, our 7 year old is starting to get impatient and is getting really pushy about the pet thing. We are starting to feel a little guilty and may be faltering in our position.
Now, to be fair to us parents let me say that we have tried a few small pets…
Auburn, our 10 year old, was 2 ½ and I was pregnant with Nina. A friend was getting rid of a pet “dwarf” bunny. It was so cute and TINY. She assured me it would stay as small as your hand. It was so cute the first month or so and Auburn and I really loved the cute little bundle…fast forward 2-3 months and our cute little bundle became this giant crazy rabbit (so much for the “dwarf” bunny). This thing was huge and would poop all over the place and leap on you…and the claws, the claws were killers! Auburn and I were both scared of the crazy giant rabbit and finally had to take it to the Humane Society. Sorry Thumper.
Our next brilliant idea was to get the girls fish…how hard can fish be?? Let me just say the 16 year old worker at pet smart isn’t the best person to get information from. So we buy a bunch of fish and a tank and all that good stuff. Things are going along just fine for a month or so. We notice the tank is looking pretty rough so we take the fish out, dump out 90% of all the water and fill it back up with our tap water. (Yes, this is what the 16 year old told us to do). We dump the fish back in and are proud of ourselves for finally cleaning the dumb tank. The next day I go in the girls’ room and the “sucker” fish (not sure about the official name, but the big guy who sucks on the side of the tank all day) is gone. Now, he is at least 3 times as big as any other fish in the tank. So, we are totally confused about where he is. He is not on the floor and definitely not in the tank. The other fish surely didn’t eat him. We finally give up the search and eventually go out and buy a new “sucker” fish. Well, the next time it’s time to clean the tank we do the same thing and the next morning the sucker fish is lying dead on the carpet. How that thing leapt out the back of the tank is beyond me. By now we realize maybe we aren’t cleaning the tank right. Someone, who is much more educated on fish than us, informs us (after laughing in our faces) that you can’t clean a tank that way….blah blah blah. So…eventually all the fish die and we end up getting rid of the tank (so glad to be done with that). And by the way, when we went to rearrange the girls’ bedroom we found the hard dead corpse of the first “sucker” fish. He had leapt out and flopped his way several feet under the girls’ bed…gross, I know. For the record, I had told my husband for weeks that there was a funny smell in the girls’ room but no one believed me.
So we have gone without any kind of pet for about 3-4 years. I’m not counting Nina’s pet caterpillar from Granny’s house named “porky” that died after a week. Nor am I counting “Sparks”, Nina’s pet ant that she had about a month ago and after several days she told me he liked her and wasn’t running from her any more and would let her pet his booty. Little did she know he was dying a slow painful death. The night he died she was so upset and crying (he was her pet for about 5 days…which was actually longer than I thought he would last). I felt so bad for her because they were real tears and she just loves animals so much. We buried his tiny shriveled up body in the ground in our back yard. She even made a paper headstone for him. Now, I am pregnant and sometimes do irrational things. I felt so bad for her I told her maybe we could get her a gerbil. (what was I thinking!) I figured, how bad can a little gerbil be?? She got all excited and I convinced my husband we could handle that. However, I have been hearing horror stories about smelly, escape artist gerbils. So, we told Nina we wouldn’t be getting the gerbil after all and are back on the idea of some more fish. I know, I know…put up a dumb fence and stick a dog in the back yard. Some days I’m tempted to do that.
The other day Rick and I were watching TV and saw some new toy that looks like a real pet tiger (Nina’s favorite animal in the whole world). It even makes noises and moves and cuddles with you. We both looked at each other with the same idea. Rick got on the internet the same day and calls to tell me the thing costs $60! At first I think, no way. But after about 30 seconds I think it is the best idea in the world. So, now we just have to stall until Christmas and get this “almost like real pet tiger”…and that should buy us another 6 months or so.
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