Farm Friday: Crazy Animals

I recently got together with an old friend.

We had gotten to be good friends when we were going through our first pregnancies together.

We delivered a month apart, and suffered through bleeding nipples, diaper blow-outs, and sleep deprivation together.

Our kids were naked in wading pools together, and now we have awesome pictures to bribe them with and embarrass them when the whim strikes us.

And now those kids are getting ready to graduate high school in a few short months, so yeah, I'm talking an old friend.

Anyway, our ages are neither here nor there, the point is, we had a great time.

We got caught up on our husbands (same ol', same ol'...).

And our kids (still driving us completely insane).

And somehow we got to talking about our animals.

I'm down to just two dogs and two cats, said Suzy.

Yeah, well my numbers are still up in the stratosphere, but we're downsizing by attrition, I replied. For example, I have our old kitchen table in the coat room, and it holds all the caged animals. We're down to just two cages, for the bird and the hamster, but it used to be like a giant 3d puzzle of critter cages with more hamsters, toads, and hermit crabs.



We had hermit crabs. It was awful.

What's up with them anyway? Why is it that whenever you see them in the stores, they look like they just dropped acid, clambering all over the cage, and you think, oh look, what interesting, active little creatures. And then as soon as you get them home, they never move again.

Mine moved. Mine moved plenty. I woke up one morning to blood-curdling screams of terror from Z. Apparently both the hermit crabs had crawled out of their shells, and had a knock-down-drag-out over who was going to get the new shell. It was a massacre. Their little limbs were lying all over the cage. One was dead, the other was still moving, but he was all dismembered, with one arm left.

Did he have a little tiny thought bubble over his head that said, "You should see the other guy?"

He should have. And before them I had these two disabled hamsters. One of them had scoliosis or something, and Every. Day. He would get on his hamster wheel and start spinning and spinning at like four in the morning. Only he couldn't fit on it right because of his deformity. So one little malformed leg would be hanging out of the hamster wheel. He tried to pull himself along, but he was all crippled and bent and the wheel made this God-awful noise. It was terrible.


And you know, I once brought our cancer-riddled guinea pig home to die in hospice care. You've never seen such a fuss over a rodent. I think the vet staff was laughing at me behind closed doors. Who in God's name brings a guinea pig to a vet?

There's something very wrong with us.

Why do we do it, Suzy, why do we do it???!!! I was just saying recently that I'm like a magnet for homeless and disabled animals, and you're worse than I am! What is wrong with us?

We may never know.





Yes, we may never know....






Image source: aqualandpetsplus.com

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