one fish, two fish, dead fish, new fish

Last week, Hot Tub Lizzy made mention of two little gerbils she had as pets growing up, and that got me thinking about all the great escapades my sister, brother, and I had with our own "pets" when we were little.

Dad and Mom wouldn't let us have a cat or dog for some unknown reason when we were really young. Truth be told, they knew that they would most likely be the ones tending to the lucky animal's every need and they had enough on their shoulders just raising three kids.

Our first "pets" were goldfish won by playing some dinky little game at our school carnival. You know the ones. Small, golden in color, sealed tightly in a clear plastic baggy, swimming precariously close to death's doorstep.

We were fascinated by the way they swam around their little glass home. We got a kick out of watching them poop and never really had to clean the bowl because they'd die before it got any kind of dirty.

One weekend, mom took the three of us to the mountains to visit family and my dad stayed home for some reason. He was given full authority over our precious babies. We left home thinking all was well in the world. Imagine our shock when we returned to find that our precious fishies had gone belly up over the weekend. And...as if that wasn't shock enough, we found out that Dad had flushed them down the toilet. Horror of horrors! To this day I still think he flushed them alive because he didn't want to deal with the nuisance of having pet fish.

After all the traumas of carnival fish, we moved up a step to store-bought goldfish. These babies were cool and much bigger than the last fish we had. We purchased all the necessary accoutrements and so Butterscotch (Sarah's), Satin Spot (mine), and Tommy Tonguebreath (Daniel's) came to call 531 McAlway Road home.

Life was good in fishdom until Butterscotch began to nibble at my sweet little Satin Spot's fins. It was because Butterscotch was jealous of Satin Spot because SS was sooo much prettier. Anyway, I'm not sure who went belly up first, but eventually is happened and the parental units nixed any more fish.

After that, we decided to get creative. My sister and I had such hearts for hurting animals. Its really a shame that mom wouldn't let us have indoor pets because we could have filled every square inch of our house with something alive or mostly-dead (which we all know means "slightly alive). Some of the lucky "pets" included:

• "HD" (Half-Dollar) the tiny turtle. My friend Dusty gave him to me and I took him home, without parental consent. My mom let me keep him, but I don't think she was happy about the situation. Apparently, neither was HD - he died a week later.

• "Slimy" the worm - Found severed in half and still wriggling, Sarah and I attempted to re-attach Slimy's appendage...with a piece of red yarn tied in a bow around his narrow body.

• Baby Bird - found in our yard, the hatchling was "mostly dead" and passed shortly thereafter. We took such pity on the bird and declared that it needed a fitting burial. We buried in smack in the middle of the yard. Atop the grave we placed a small wooden cross made of sticks and surrounded it with azaleas. If only I could find the picture of it. Yes. I took a picture. Of a dead bird's grave.

Now its your turn to play along. What was your first pet and what did you name it?