Pets

Growing up, I always wanted a dog. My dream was to own a St. Bernard. I loved that it was a big dog and it had longhair. I knew that living in Cleveland, Ohio, that if I got lost or stuck out in the snow, my dog would find me and save me. It would also have a keg around it's neck and that would have hot chocolate to warm me. My dog would guide me safely back to my house on 41st Street and Loraine Avenue.

Since we lived in rental apartments and rental homes, we were never allowed to have a dog. Except for the time my brother and I found a black Cocker Spaniel puppy and worked on our father's emotions to let it live with us. I called the dog, Mickey. My brother seemed to have called him Rusty. Whatever, we enjoyed the pet for a few short days, until late one night, my father was hurrying to the bathroom, stepped over the big piece of plywood that kept Mickey in the kitchen, only to plant his foot firmly in Mickey's poop. Mickey was gone the next day after we came home from school. It was a loss that I can remember, fifty years later. But I did name my twin son Michael after a pet that I never had a chance to grow up with. My Michael (Mickey) is still around. Even though he made messes, I never got rid of him.

We were allowed to have some smaller pets that didn't come on four legs though. We had birds, like a canary and parakeets that my mother loved and we tolerated. It is hard to have a pet that you can't pet or hold but that was life with the birds. Candy, the Canary was yellow and sang beautifully and then died. No more canaries. The parakeets could talk because my mother taught them. One parakeet died and the other developed gout and my Dad made me walk into the Vet with the bird in his cage, and walk out with an empty cage. That was heartless on my father's part and a lasting memory for me.

We also had our share of gold fish and turtles. I do remember two different times we were given a fish and a chicken to eat. One of my father's friends caught a big fish in Lake Erie and gave it to him. The fish wasn't dead and my father couldn't kill it. So, he put it into our bathtub where it swam around for the weekend. No baths for the weekend. I was scared to death to even use the bathroom for fear that the fish would jump out of the tub. On that Monday morning, my father took the fish back to Lake Erie and threw it back into the water.

The other animal was the live chicken that our friend, the butcher, brought over to our house and gave it to us for Thanksgiving dinner. Our friend stayed around long enough to kill the chicken in our backyard. My brother and I watched the chicken get his head cut off, and run around our small backyard until it dropped. I don't know who plucked the feathers and I don't care, but I do know that no one ate that chicken for dinner. As far as that went, I never ate eggs for years because eggs came from chickens and I wouldn't eat both for a very long time.

As far as pets...when I grew up and had my own home, the first animal that I intended to buy would be that St. Bernard puppy. But that dream never materialized. I would come to have many kids, many cats, an iguana, goldfish, aquariums filled with exotic fish, big boxed turtles, rabbits, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters, hermit crabs and two stray dogs. This story is for another time and another Blog.