You might think that getting a family pet would be a relatively straightforward affair. But that wasn’t the case in my family. For about two weeks, we had a cat, a beautiful and affectionate Siamese kitten. But it turned out that I was violently, asthmatically allergic to cats; so that put the kibosh on that idea.

 

Fortuitously, about that time, little pet turtles became all the rage, the ones kept in those clear, round, plastic containers that had a brown-and-green plastic palm tree in the center, and in which you would keep a little water in the “pool” for the turtle to swim and bathe in. A turtle seemed like a very low maintenance pet, and the chances for allergies slim, so we obtained “Pokey,” (a name that was to be recycled ad infinitum throughout our family’s history) and us kids lavished tons of attention on the little guy. Whether this is what did him in, or whether it was the Salmonella that these turtles carried, we found him floating belly-up in the water one day. And plead as we might, no new turtles were forthcoming.

 

So then we scooped minnows out of a nearby pond and dumped them in the bathtub where they promptly croaked, much to our dismay, while our parents sighed, “We told you so.” But it was just as well, I suppose (for us, not the fish), if we were going to bathe in there. You know, at some point. My brother would occasionally trap squirrels and then bring them into the house where they would run amok and set our housekeeper to screaming and then they would finally wedge themselves between a radiator and its cover. Attempts to pull them out by their tail only resulted in a collection of squirrel tails and a bunch of manx-like squirrels running scared around the neighborhood.

 

Well, then a friend of mine gave me a snail that I installed in Pokey’s old digs. The beauty of a snail (also named Pokey), my friend said, is that they clean their own tank. So I wouldn’t ever have to do anything to take care of it. I took her literally on this, so I never, ever changed the water. I would occasionally add some water to keep the aquarium full, but little by little, the water got cloudy. Then fetid. And stinky. Very stinky. So stinky that I moved out of my room into my sister’s room and kept the door to my bedroom closed. But soon the stench began leaking out from under the door into the rest of the house. After awhile, the entire house began to smell like someone had left a chicken carcass stuffed with a wedge of Limburger cheese under the sofa. I was outraged when my parents demanded that I get rid of the snail. But they did call the shots. So, not knowing what else to do, I dumped him in the bird bath, unable to look in there for weeks, terrified that I might spot an empty shell.

 

When even a snail appeared to be too much pet for me, I made pets out of beans that I found on a neighborhood tree: dark brown beans the size of a kidney bean with black flecks on them. I found two in particular that appealed to me and made them hats out of cardboard and Scotch tape, a mortar board for Irving and a sombrero for Harry. I fashioned a home for them out of an old gift box, sticking stamps onto the walls for pictures, making them beds out of Kleenex, a table out of aluminum foil, and I had one tiny little blue wooden cup that they shared. (Later, when I told a friend about this arrangement, he said, “Gay beans? You had gay beans?” Well, maybe. A lovely couple lived behind us, and even though I didn’t have a clue as to what homosexuality was at the time, they seemed both happy and nice.)

 

Perhaps thinking that this was just a little too pathetic and strange, my parents allowed me to keep the mice that a friend gave me one birthday. I liked playing with the mice, but they came with one serious drawback: They got out of their cage at night and frisked around the house. I would wake up sometimes feeling the pitter-patter of little feet on my back, their revved up heartbeats palpable in their paws. I didn’t mind so much, but you can imagine how everyone else felt. And I remember one wild night when the entire family was up trying to catch one particularly rambunctious little guy. If only we had that on video. It would be funny now!

 

No one was amused then, however.

 

 

But I still wasn’t ready to relinquish the idea of having a pet. Building upon my pet bean idea, I decided to make pets out of water balloons. I got some balloons that filled up to the size of a compact chinchilla, drew faces on them with a Magic Marker, and then carried them around with me wherever I went. I’m sure that you can anticipate a problem here as well. Many times, while I sat on the sofa or in the back of the family station wagon, stroking little Winthrop or Pokey, they would pop loudly without warning, drenching me and whatever I happened to be occupying with a surprisingly large volume of water.

 

Are you starting to pity my parents yet? Or did that happen several paragraphs ago?

 

Fortunately, by then, I was heading for high school. And I became more interested in peers than pets. When I reached my twenties, I had the deeply satisfying experience of enjoying a real pet, a black Lab/malamute mix named Jessie, whom Richard and I semi-adopted when we shared a residence with his sister Kathleen and her husband Joe. And Jessie was a King Arthur among dogs, a canine companion so delightful and intelligent and funny and interesting that after she died, at the age of seventeen-and-a-half, none of us were able to bring ourselves to get a new dog.

 

But maybe one of these days.

 

In the meantime, I’m checking out the local buckeye situation. I’m sure they’d look good in hats … .