Of Mice, Dogs and Man

I really enjoy having Furby by my side at night. Not that I am into bestiality. I just enjoy having a baby sleep beside me. Last night, I brought home a puppy play pen, which I bought from my friend. Well, that would keep Furby from sleeping in the dark recesses of my room and urinating and pooping all over. Unfortunately, he would whine because he didn't like it there. But that's all part of my puppy training.

Puppy loves
And speaking of pets, I remember my first pet, Sprite. He was a Japanese spitz, whom I adored and went gaga over. But I was only 3 years old when I had him, so he was more like a brother than a baby to me. Unfortunately, when I was around 6 or 7, he went to heaven, leaving me in pieces. We just found him one morning on the roadside, his body pierced with an icepick on the side. We later learned that some drunk guys in our neighborhood didn't like my dog's attitude, so they shut him up--for good. It was a traumatic experience for me, but I never really gave up on the idea of owning pets.

A few year's after Sprite's demise, my dad brought me along to watch a movie with him in old Manila. You know those creepy cinemas where only a handful of people watch? We watched an action flick. After the movie, we passed by an establishment popular for the dogs they sell on the sidewalk. And so, after much bugging, he obliged to buy me not one, but two puppies, whom I named Coca (is it obvious that I have this strange inclination to name my dogs after soda brands?) and Sprite (as a tribute to my fallen pet). After about 2 weeks, Sprite fell ill and soon died. Coca lived on for about 13 or 14 human years to give us more puppies (most of whom were given to friends). And then we had another dog, whose name excapes me (because he's my brother's dog to begin with), who mothered more puppies (Coca was still with us at that time). One of  those puppies became my puppy as well, and I named him Murphy. Murphy was a medium-size dog; his father was a German Shepherd that a neighbor owned. When he was about 4 or 5 human years old, he became ill and died, even when the vet regularly came to us for housecalls.

And then we had another Japanese spitz puppy given by an uncle. During his first night at home, I was so excited about our new pet that I tossed him in the air like a baby, catching him with both arms. In my last toss, I accidentally failed to catch him, causing him to land on the pillow where he was sleeping--head first. I thought I killed him because he wasn't breathing anymore. What did I do? I gave him chest compressions and blew air into his mouth. Good thing he regained consciousness. A few months after, though, he died. He was accidentally ran over by our driver right in our own garage!

We had a lot more dogs, all of whom are gone or were given to friends (some were sold). Now, we are left with Stallone (a yellow labrador retriever, son of our chocolate brown labrador retriever Cocoa, who is now under my uncle's care), Whitie (who's not really that white, is in his twilight years--hey, we had him since I was 16, making him about 15 human years old), and of course my Furby.

The birds and the bees
Aside from dogs, I also have had pets of different kinds.

I remember in elementary school, I used to go to a creek in our school and collect these snails. I would take them home in a plastic cup and put them in a fishbowl as soon as I got home. I eventually had to let them go because my folks didn't like the smell, and they said it wasn't natural for the snails to be pets.

There was also this one Christmas where I asked Santa for a pair of bunnies, which Santa gleefully gave me. Of course, I eventually found out that Santa is my mom, who loves animals as well (you've got to hand it to her to allow us to have pets at home despite my dad's disapproval). I could still remember how wide-eyed I was that one December morning, very happy about my new playmates. Unfortunately, they died a year later. I kept them in a big box, and one time, I accidentally (read: purposely) threw in a piece of lit firecracker inside. A few days later, the bunnies died. Cause of death? I believed it was a heart attack.

And then I got these really cool love birds for my 7th birthday. I remember, my mom bought me four of them: one blue, two yellow and one green. Sadly, they disappeared little by little over a span of a year. We found out that a stray cat would sneak up at night and open their cage, snagging them from their silent perch and eating them alive.

In high school, we got this huge aquarium from our uncle who used to have an aruwana. Excited as I was to have another kind of pet, I bought fishes--different species from tetras and angel fishes, to gold fishes and fighter fishes. My mom adored these fishes, but somehow they died one by one because of overcrowding.

One day, on my way home from school, I chanced upon this duckling vendor on the sidewalk. Naturally, I bought one to take home as a pet. At home, thinking that ducks are aquatic birds, I placed the duck on the aquarium and left it there. Imagine my horror when two days after, the duck died. It was probably due to overexhaustion--from all the paddling. I also managed to buy a chick at about the same year. It died the night I brought it home because a cat ate it.

And do you remember those high school experiments you had involving white mice? Well, I got so engrossed in them that I bought about four extra mice for me to take care of. The pet vendor put them in a brown paper bag with holes. Unfortunately, one of them managed to escape in the car. After hours of frantically searching for it, I eventually gave up. And so I was left with three. While transferring them to their cage, one of them escaped again and went inside a mouse hole in the house. The next day, as we rode the car and turned the air conditioner on ... fffrrrrrrr ... shreds of white fur came out of the air conditioner. One mouse down. After a few months, I saw a cute little mouse coming out of the mouse hole. It was a black mouse with blotches of white all over. Probably my little mouse escapee found true love in the whole. As for the other two that I still had? Well, they lived long enough in terms of mouse years to live in the beautiful cage I had for them.

Then in college, my classmate gave me a kitten. It was beautiful. It was pure white, with one eye blue and the other eye green. My dad was really furious that time because cat poop really stinks. Anyway, the anger was short-lived because about a week after, the kitten managed to escape from the house and died enroute to freedom as one of our dogs bit him in the neck.

I also bought a pair of hamsters in college, which I kept in a small aquarium (without the water, of course). Eventually, their love bloomed and gave us four baby hamsterets. Sadly, they disappeared one by one. I later realized that the mommy hamster ate her kids. Eventually, the mommy hamster attacked the daddy hamster, who later died. The mommy hamster was alone until her death a few months after. Talk about marital spats.

And then we had this experiment in college where we needed to find out something about the effect of a particular drug (I can't really recall if it's iodine) on the urine of a guinea pig. We had to shave off a small part of her fur and we had to measure the drug content in the urine. After the experiment, I took home the guinea pig and took care of it. I didn't have much trouble with it except that it made these funny sounds at night. Eventually, it, too, died.

I also bought a fortune lobster, which I displayed in our living room. It was there for a few months, molting about twice before it died. A kid we had over gave him too much to eat. It was too late when I found out about it and by then, the lobster was already dying.

Loving them
I love animals, and I like having them around me. One of my greatest dreams is to have a small petting zoo where everyone can interact with these marvelous creatures. If not, I can have a small farm where all these animals can freely roam around. But until such time that I can amass a fortune to buy all these critters, I have my Furby to tend to. For now, I'm contented with having Furby around, anticipating my walks in the park with him, reading a book under a tree while he lazes beside me. Or playing frisbee with him on the beach. Lucky Furby.