pets

You know, sometimes on bad days, I wish I could come back in the next life as a dog or a turtle. That just seems not as a hard as being human sometimes, unless you’re a pet of one of my friends or family.

I was hanging out with Alex and Kurt last weekend and we couldn’t stop laughing about these horrific stories (we’re a dark bunch.) Several of Alex’s gerbils met a dark and violent end. One died when his mom was vacuuming. She was just waving the vaccum under the couch or whatever, and then, all of sudden, the vaccum went WHOMP. Another died when his mom didn’t know the gerbil was hanging out in the Murphy Bed, and she shut it, and the thing went into the next life with fifth percent of its body.

My cousin Ed had a hamster when we were kids, and we used to let it run around the house at midnight when we were bored and find it behind my uncle’s record collection. He died b/c Ed forgot to give him water, but Ed was like five or something, so I blame my aunt and uncle. Ha ha. More than once, Jaws would accidentally race down the stairs in his Hamster Ball. Speaking of stairs, that happened to Husband’s turtle Shelvin too. When he lived in the Bronx, he and his roommate kept an eye on him as best as they could b/c they lived at the top of a pretty long stair case, but you know, inevitably, there was one day where they heard a series of quickening clunks, and Shelvin was on the first floor in a heart beat. The fella coughed up a little blood, but Husband insists he went on to live a very fulfilling life.

I never had a pet. I wanted a dog for about a month when I was kid, but Dad steadfastly refused b/c he knew in the end it would be his job to mind the dog. He was right. With an owner like me, that dog would have probably ended up flea-infested, at a bar somewhere in Jersey, complaining about life.