 My cat stays outside because my oldest son is allergic to them. And
even though he rarely shows up here -- my son, not my cat -- I don't
want to narrow down the possibility even more by having, in the
house, an animal that makes him miserable.The cat also stays
outside because, well, the diaper thing again. Litter boxes are
nothing more than an extremely loose-fitting diaper filled with
sand. She's pretty low-maintenance, though. My daughter feeds her
once a day.
Whatever my cat doesn't eat, a stray opossum will finish off that
night, like an automatic bowl cleaner. If my daughter forgets to
feed her one morning, my cat gently reminds her by leaving the
remains of some small, hapless animal on our doorstep.
"Hey, there's a dead animal on the patio! Did you feed the cat
today?"
Low maintenance ... unless we forget to feed her.
We have recently acquired three -- count 'em, three -- more pets
for which we are now responsible.
My 11-year-old wanted a hermit crab. Why? "Cuz they're cool!" He
had the acquisition of this pet planned to the smallest detail.
There was no way I could say no.
I only let him have a hermit crab for three reasons: 1. He saved
the money and was willing to pay for it himself. 2. He had done the
research on what they eat and how to take care of them. 3. He was
spouting all sorts of zoological hermit crab jargon that sounded
impressive enough to be true.
He systematically took away all of my objections and I didn't
have a leg to stand on, except "Because I said so!" And that one is
used only for extreme circumstances. So he got a hermit crab.
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 He named it Hermes. Short for hermit. It was not very original,
so he Googled the name and found out that it was also the name of a
Greek god. That sounded more legitimate, he thought, and Mom would
be impressed as well.
Dribbles, our new baby turtle, was named for the excessive amount
of urinating he did whenever he was picked up. He's faring well in
an oversized Tupperware container. My daughter found him in a pond
and caught him with a fish net. Although he seemed to be doing quite
well on his own, my daughter was convinced that he needed help
because he was still a baby. Fortunately, turtles can live a long
time -- possibly long enough that we eventually won't remember why
we called him Dribbles.
My 6-year-old caught a lizard and calls him Sharky. That was a
very original name, if only because of its obvious inaccuracy. My
son caught him with his bare hands. After so many chocolate milk
spills, I didn't expect that kind of precision hand-eye
coordination. But the lizard's tail broke off on his way to the
jar-prison. Now that he's an amputee, my little boy feels kind of
responsible for him.
"How will he survive in the wild without a tail?"
I think maybe he should have thought about that before he decided
to put him in a jar. Sharky only eats live bugs, though, so my
children hunt down live bugs right after breakfast each morning.
Yummy.
So much for a low-maintenance life.
[By LAURA SNYDER]
You can reach the writer at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
Or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more columns and info about her books.
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