I worked for a large reptile wholesaler for a time.  This particular wholesaler had a fondness for very large pythons.  There were several gargantuan Burmese pythons at this place.  Female Burmese pythons can get really, really huge–20 foot plus huge and wider around than a truck tire.  While they are mellow snakes not prone to biting (Thank God), that huge body is controlled by a tiny little brain.  As a result, any time we would go to feed the Burmese, it would require two people.  One person to feed, one to “spot”.  The spotter’s job was to get the snake off you should it mistake you for its dinner. 

Now the Burmese, they ate pigs.  Yeah, pigs.  Small pigs, but still, PIGS.  One warm summer day, I got to work and was greeted by the nastiest smell in the universe.  The large female Burm had upchucked her pig.  I had to clean it as the other employee was incapacitated by repeated bouts of his own barfing (poor guy).  So yeah, it was as gross as you can imagine.

Fast forward four years and I have a kid.  For those of you who don’t have children, let me describe some of the things that will get on other things with a small child around.  They will piss on the floor.  They will barf on the sofa, the car, your bed.  They will wipe boogers on the walls.  They are friggin gross.  However, because of my prior experience and survival of cleaning up huge snake vomit, I was inured to this aspect of child rearing.  So there’s a silver lining to snake barf.

One of my neighbors, her house is a black hole for pets.  They go in but they don’t come out (alive anyway, or they are brought there for burial already dead).  Apprently she had some friends visiting with their two rather boisterous canines.  I’m unsure how (I was afraid to ask for the details-yeach), but the dogs somehow got to her daughter’s new pet guinea pig, and dogs, well being predators….lets just say Piggies’ stay in my friend’s household was shortened. So Piggie went into the garden, buried in a dog treat box (the final insult I’d imagine), next to my friend’s friend’s boa constrictor.  Piggie did however, get the benefit of another recitation of the Clark Griswold’s eulogy for Aunt Edna.

I don’t think my friend ever plans on moving, but if she does, I hope the next people to buy her house aren’t gardeners. If they are, they are surely going to wonder about the former residents once they starting tilling the new perennial bed.  

Sometimes…I don’t know how to explain things we do in my neighborhood.  One of my neighbors related this story:

Her long time friend had a boa constrictor, Ruby, for 8 years (which is actually a short time, boas can live 20 years plus).  Ruby went from cold-blooded to just plain cold the other night.  Her friend lives in a townhouse, and didn’t have any place he could properly inter his long and beefy friend, so being the nice, caring, somewhat twisted person my neighbor is, she volunteered her yard for Ruby’s burial.  The funeral was attended by her, her 4 year old daughter, another neighbor (who quipped, “yeah I just went over there for pizza and this is what I get”), her husband, and their 4 year old daughter, and the long time friend.

Her friend apparently dug the grave, and placed his departed friend inside. They all took turns shovelling dirt in.  Then they gathered around, lit a candle–a scented one as boa constrictors are large snakes–and recited:

Clark Griswold’s Eulogy for Aunt Edna from Vacation

I swear I am not making this up.  

This is one of the ways I know I belong in this neighborhood–it’s populated by kind hearted, sweet and twisted Gen Xers. 

I am currently debating the prudence of getting my soon to be 5 year old daughter a pet, but as I’ve had rather negative dealings with hamsters in the past, you can be sure she won’t be getting one of those.

When I was 6, my family lived in Eden Praire, Minnesota. I wanted a pet I could keep in my room.  First, my parents got me a gerbil and a Habbitrail set–this modernist plastic cage with see through tubes and small nesting areas (they still sell them).  They also got my brother Mark a gerbil and cage set-up.  Well my gerbil didn’t last long, several days later that unfortunate creature broke its neck when it got stuck in a elbow section of the Habbitrail.  I was very upset and cried but Mark laughed, apparently tempting the poetic justic Gods because his hamster froze to death (inside the house!  That’s Minnesota in the winter for you) that very same night.  To replace the gerbil, my parents bought me a hamster I for some reason named Buffy (the Habbitrail however, went in the trash). 

He lasted at least a few months and then made his escape.  He was gone a long time and we assumed that he had gotten out of the house and died-we were partially correct.  One day my mom’s friend’s visiting British daughter was in the laundry room and noticed that the sink was not draining.  So she attempted to pull out the obstruction which I imagine she thought was a hair clog-once again, partially correct.  She screamed bloody murder and we all ran in.  She had extracted the corpse of my poor hamster Buffy from the pipe; the corpse was unnaturally elongated from the suction.  I have no idea how the poor creature came to such an end, but sufficed to say I did not get any more small rodents as pets.