CRITTERS GALORE

Hello again, and welcome back to my blog. Having a pet was always an integral part of any child’s upbringing. In our house, we welcomed many of those same critters, but sometimes having to care for them didn’t go as planned. Hope you enjoy the story.

For as far back as I could remember, all of us kids had pets of some kind growing up.  My earliest recollection was of our tiny, scrawny cat named Snowball.  We got her as a kitten from a neighbor who’s female cat was the whore of the neighborhood.  Gretchen, the mother cat, was notorious for getting herself in a family way with various “Toms” she met while out strolling in the wee hours of the morning.  Snowball originally had two other sisters, but they didn’t make it past day one.  Once she was properly weaned, she was handed over to us wrapped in an old beach towel while snuggling in one corner of a torn Clorox bleach box. She was a tiny thing from the beginning, and never did gain any substantial weight.

My sister Judy, who was only 2 ½ years old at the time, would pick up the tiny kitten by the neck and waddle around the house with it. It’s eyes bulged out while trying to eke out the tiniest of painful mews.  Any adult who was around would hear the poor thing’s cries, and would then try to pry the tiny creature from my sister’s lethal grip.  Of course, Judy would just plop down on the floor and make a scene, crying at the top of her undeveloped but powerful lungs.  Two minutes later, she managed to spot the terrified cat crouched under the sofa and dragged it out by its tail, only to wreak havoc on it once again.  We eventually resorted to replacing the live animal with a fake stuffed one, but it took at least five substitutes before Judy was satisfied with a replacement.  Snowball was finally free from Judy’s menacing fingers.  

To this day, Judy and her husband are visited daily by at least a dozen wild animals including squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, chipmunks, and birds.  Judy spends a small fortune on food to keep them all fat and happy.  I guess she’s making up for all that torture she inflicted on Snowball as a child.

Snowball lived for only a few short years later.  One very cold December morning, my dad came home from a trip to the local farm market and parked his car in the driveway.  Snowball had somehow managed to get out of the house the night before, and had sought refuge from the freezing temperatures by hiding in the backyard shed.  Once morning arrived, she came around to the front door meowing her best to be let in, but her cries went unanswered.  She then got a whiff of warm air emanating from dad’s car. She realized that this would be the perfect place to get warm until she could manage to get back inside.  She climbed into the engine compartment and fell asleep on the large air filter cover where it was quite warm and cozy.   Dad came back out of the house about an hour later and got into the driver’s seat of the car. He started the engine and was startled by Snowball’s horrific screams.  Dad lifted the hood and found her laying there, badly mauled by the fan blade. Unfortunately, she died shortly after.

Dad thought it best to simply replace Snowball as quickly as he could, so we could put that misery out of our little minds. But it was difficult at best. 

We adopted a short-haired tabby from the local animal shelter a few weeks later. We named her Whiskers.  She was mostly orange and white in color, and she was about a year old when she came to live with us.  But that didn’t last.  She wandered off one day about three months later, and we never saw or heard from her again.

As the kids got older, the thought of taking care of yet another house pet rarely came up. So we lived without cats, dogs and other various critters from then on.

I did try raising pet fish for a while. After a very costly initial investment, it seemed like the only thing that wanted to stay alive in that tank was a couple of algae-eating tangs.

We got a lot of rain in New Jersey in the summers.   Sometimes it rained for two whole days without stopping.  Our house had a basement, and the three windows below ground were “protected” by what the builders called window wells.  These were solid curved metal fences set into the soil, extending about three or four inches above the ground.  They were meant to keep the rainwater from getting into the house. On a particular July day after one of these rainstorm events, my sister Nora and I were finally able to go outside in the backyard and play in the now dry, green grass.  As we were walking past one of the window wells, Nora noticed something moving in the inch or two of remaining water down in the well.

She reached down inside to find a tiny, abandoned box turtle. Apparently it had managed to swim into the well when the water was high. However, since the water receded, it was trapped with nowhere to go.  She picked up the poor creature and set it down in the grass.  It started moving ever-so-slowly and seemed disoriented. She immediately named it Mr. Magoo.  “I’m going to keep it as a pet”, she said, and with that she ran into the yard and plopped down on the nice, warm grass and let Mr. Magoo wander. 

Nora found a nice, clean shoe box. With a few colorful crayons, some dried-out straw, and a small flat-topped rock, she fashioned him a home.  Magoo was well taken care of, being fed bits of vegetables daily and given regular exercise periods.

My sister had a tight bond with Mr. Magoo. By the end of July, the turtle had grown a bit bigger and became a little more active.  One afternoon after school, Nora was out in the backyard playing with Magoo. Suddenly nature called, and she had to rush inside to the bathroom.  She left Mr. Magoo outside in his fancy home, with the top lid off.  When she walked back outside she spotted a pair of very nasty crows, dive bombing and attacking her turtle.  He was of course trapped and unable to defend himself. Nora ran the birds off, but it was too late.  We buried Mr. Magoo out in back by the clothesline pole. I carved a big letter “M” on his rock and placed it on his grave. I’m sure he is now enjoying his little piece of turtle heaven.  

Unlike most girls, my younger sister Maryann wasn’t afraid of bugs. In fact, she even had one as a pet.  In early April, you could easily spot praying mantises in and around the newly blooming daffodils.  You had to look hard, because they were great at disguising themselves among the other greenery.  Maryann took a liking to one rather larger specimen, and decided to enslave it.  Since she knew nothing about how to care for a mantis, she enlisted me to help her learn about it.  Luckily I had the complete six-volume set of “The Book of Popular Science”. 

“It says here that you need a small terrarium, some wet vegetation, and a few rocks for it to hide under”, I told her.  “You also need to mist the area lightly once every day or so, and make sure to put a few small live bugs in there so it can catch dinner.” “I can do that,” she said. 

Princess Maria Mantis lived for about two months.  At least we think she did.  Maryann inadvertently left a corner of the top lid ajar one day, and Maria managed to make her daring escape back into the wilds.

My middle brother Pat was the adventurer in the family.  He was the one taking way too many risks, and challenging anyone at anything even remotely physical. One early Saturday, while wading through the creek that meandered behind the row of houses across the street from ours, he came across a small green grass snake.  He picked it up, and it curled itself around his tiny fat fingers. He decided to give it a new home.

He stuck the snake in one of the small pockets of his carpenter jeans and closed the snap.  Upon arriving home, Mom gave him a list of chores that needed to be done. Pat enlisted me to help.  We spent the next two hours cleaning out the shed in the backyard. Then, after that, we sat down to a nice lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk.  Once we were finished, there was trash in the basement that needed to be carted out and discarded. The last thing on the list was cleaning up the spilled oil on the pavement, from one of my brother’s failed attempts at an oil change.  As the day wore on, so did we, and by 6 p.m. that evening, both my weary brother and I had taken our showers and changed into clean clothes.

The next morning, Mom went downstairs to take the load of laundry out of the washer and put it into the dryer. When she opened the lid on the Speed Queen washer, she came upon the now-deceased, long, green water snake wrapped around the agitator. Mom was not willing to even touch the beast, even though it had gone through the most thorough, body-cleansing wash cycle. She reached for a wire hanger and removed the unnamed intruder, placing it into the nearby dustbin. 

My brother, having completely forgotten about his hide-a-way pet, was informed by my mother that he probably shouldn’t use Tide or bleach to sanitize his creatures in the future.  For many years after, my brother Pat had to endure lots and lots of dead snake jokes from just about everyone.