Pets

Next question:  "Did you have any pets?"

The creative answer to that question would be "not as many as I would have liked".  I was pretty interested in animals when I was a child.  I remember having friends who "adopted" stray cats and dogs (who then proceeded to have kittens or puppies) and I was always kind of envious of them.  I also would have loved to have a gerbil, hamster, or guinea pig, but that was definitely a "no go" for my parents!  A bird would have been nice too, but our family had a bird at some point (before I was born) and my mom said she'd never get another one because she felt so bad when it got sick and died, and she couldn't do anything to help it.  (In fairness to my parents, though, I totally understand now why they didn't want random animals running all over our house and I have turned into that kind of person myself!)

We were a dog family.  (No cats!  My parents are not fond of cats.)  I've been told that we had a dog named Pepper when I was very young, but I don't remember this dog at all.  When I was a year or two old, my brother Hans received a dog as a birthday present.  He was a white toy poodle named Pierre.  (Well, his "real" name was Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte Fritz Pew, but we called him Pierre.  He had so many names because there were so many opinions about what he should be named.)  I grew up along with Pierre.  He got sick and died when I was about 11 years old.  I loved Pierre.  I'm sure I tortured him without intending to--I sometimes dressed him up in doll clothes!  I used to pet him and he would lick my hands all over.  (My mom would tell us not to let him do that--I couldn't imagine why!  Now, remembering, I think "Yuck!")  I used to get a kick out of watching Pierre bark because his tail (very short, with a little ball of fur at the end) would go down.  The harder he barked, the farther it would go down!  Pierre would scratch on the door to let us know when he needed to go out.  Sometimes (very rare) we would put him on his leash and take him on a walk.  He loved that!  It was nice having a dog in the house when I was growing up.

Besides Pierre, the only other pets I had were fish.  Some of my older siblings had a fish tank when I was younger and I remember around the age of 8 being given my own fish, whom I named "Hey Charlie".  (I have no idea why!)  Later, when I was a teenager, Amy and I had a couple of fish tanks full of fish.  I remember it was a lot of work to keep the tanks clean.  Fish aren't very hardy, so fish came and went over the years and I don't remember very many of them.  One of my favorites, though, was one of the first fish we got--a catfish we dubbed "Murky".  He would sit on the bottom of the tank and sulk in kind of a cute way.  I liked the neon tetras because they were so colorful and shiny.  We had a lot of guppies, too, and once we bought one that looked pregnant.  Sure enough, within a day or two she had 16 babies!  Our days as fish owners came to an abrupt end one year when Amy and I went to girls' camp.  While we were gone, our fish caught a nasty fish disease called (appropriately) "Ick".  This illness quickly spread through our whole fish population, and by the time Amy and I returned from camp, most of our fish (including Murky) were dead.  We decided we didn't want to start over at that point. 

I think it's kind of funny that as an adult, the only pets I've had are fish and a dog.  I really need to get a turtle or something someday!