When I was a kid, my mother said, "There will absolutely be NO PETS IN THIS HOUSE!" Here, then, is a list of all the
Pets I Grew Up With
1. Gerbils: Xavier and Myrtle
2. Mice: Shasta, Pepsi, and Millie
3. Several Turtles whose names I forget
4. Dozens of tanks of tropical fish, including a piranha
5. A few garter snakes
6. Hamsters: Peanuts and Amy
7. Dog: Dusty
8. Guinea Pigs: Cory, Toby, and Eric
9. Chicken: Elton
10. Bunny: ShilohIt is worth noting that every single one of these pets lived in the house, except the bunny, who had a deluxe pen outdoors. Not one of these pets made it into our home with my mother's prior approval or her permission. They merely showed up and she could do--and did--nothing about it. My father merely shrugged his shoulders and smiled, knowing his involvement would be nil. Also, my mother immediately liked all of them with the exception of the snakes and the mice, which brings me to a story that is very telling about my mother.
When the mice showed up, Mom was supremely irked, and she made my sister Susan and I promise to keep them upstairs so that she didn't have to see them. As usual, we had no idea how to take care of these pets, and we didn't realize how easily mice can escape any enclosure, no matter how small the opening provided. The mice getting loose was an hourly occurrence, and my mother started threatening to suck them up in the vacuum. One day, she saw Susan's mouse, Millie, the most Houdini-like of the three, scurrying along the livingroom baseboards as we were getting ready to leave for school. "That's IT!" my mother screamed. "NEITHER OF YOU GIRLS IS GOING TO SCHOOL UNTIL YOU FIND THAT MOUSE!"
Millie enjoyed the run of the house for most of the day.
4 comments:
One morning before school when I was young, I asked my mother before school if I could get a hamster. She said yes, probably just to shut me up. After school, my babysitter picked me up, and I told him that my mom said we could get a hamster. So he drove me to Best in Pets, and we bought a hamster and all of the accoutrements (we already had a tank from a turtle I had). My mom came home, saw the little guy running around on his wheel, and probably asked me what the hell a hamster was doing in the house. But she didn't care enough to make me take it back.
We kept it until it got loose, got locked in a closet, and chewed its way through the carpet to get out. She told me she sold it to someone else, but I'd guess she probably just let it loose in a park or something.
Mikey--When Rick and I were first married, we got a habitrail setup and two hamsters also. Charlotte and Emily quickly became pariahs when their nocturnal destruction of the habitrail started keeping us up at night. Chewing nonstop on plastic is LOUD.
Perhaps your hamster went native someplace and found its bliss. (There wasn't a clog in the toilet anytime shortly after it was "sold", was there...?)
Aha! A guinea pig expert. I need you to show me how to clean a cage.
Mary G--Hi! Oh, I hated to clean my guinea pigs' homes. All my gp's lived in 25-gallon aquariums. I covered the kitchen table in newspaper, plopped the pet onto it, then dumped the contents of the "house" into the trash. After that, it was pretty simple. Paper towels, Windex, then new cedar shavings. The pigs were very good with depth perception and never fell off the table. Sometimes, though, my mother held them. She loved those little guys!
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