Weird Pets

Where I come from, people had pretty ordinary or what you might call normal, pets. Mostly, dogs and cats, maybe a couple of fish, even a horse. Nothing too terribly unusual. The names were pretty normal too – names like King, Queenie, Spot, Fluffy, Smokey, Snowball. Basically names that you wouldn’t name a person, your kid or something, you know pet names.

Though I’ve noticed as the march of time moved on, people got weirder and weirder pets. I think the first clue was the Pet Rock. Now, one has to really think about that for a minute – how much of loser does one have to be in order to only be pet-compatible with a rock? A rock? What’s worse is people even named their pet rocks. Can you say loser?

I think though that this could possibly be an extension of the naming your vehicle thing. Bessie, Fred, WildThang, whatever – people who name their cars and trucks are making pets of them. To me, too weird. I have names for my car but they are reserved for times of stress when the car is giving me trouble and costing me money. They would never be considered endearments of any kind.

After the pet rocks there seemed to be a trend toward naming animals as if they were children or people. Names like Remington, Charlamagne, and Bruce come to mind. Or naming pets after famous people like Thurber, Hemingway and Prince Charles.

Then came the occasional odd pet:

The pet wolf – pretty and sorta looked like a dog but could turn on you at any moment.

The baby racoon that turned into a terror and garbage can addict in just a few short weeks.

Ferretts and mongooses. Oh yeah, out here, they are really popular.

Rats and mice. Now doesn’t it strike you as weird that people would make pets of creatures that whole industries have been created for the sole purpose of destroying same?

How’s about an ocelot? There’s a purty pussycat. Course he’ll take out your eye if you ain’t paying attention.

Pet ants – ant farms. Refer back to mice/rat statement.

Pet snakes. Especially snakes like Boas – great, I love you to death – right?

Of course if you Michael Jackson you have your own giraffe and several chimpanzees.

Pet monkeys – those creepy little dudes that used to be the organ grinder’s friend in the bad B movies from the 40’s & 50’s is now suddenly a really cool pet thanks to Ross from Friends. Yoiks.

Rabbits are also weird pets the poop non-stop, make no really connection to any other living creature and never have any life in their eyes. Sure they are cute but -hello! nobody home.

Lately, my dog (magpie – maggie for short) has been trying to make the possum who lives in our yard her pet. You can always tell when our possum is out and about because Maggie gets all agitated and makes this really annoying whiney sound and runs around in circles chasing her tail. You think she really has to go and you let her outside and then she runs up and down the yard along the back wall making that weird growly whiney sound – apparently trying to teach the Possum how to ‘heel’ or something. It takes an hour sometimes to get her back in the house. And even after she is in, she is still hankering for some quality time with Possum. Do you think if I showed her this picture, she’d change her mind?

Gotta go, she is insisting she has to pee and giving that pathetic, I’m-a-poor-puppy look and I just know that if I choose to believe she is faking I will be cleaning up the carpet later.

So how about you? Know any weird pets?

WC