We don't have any pets. In 8 1/2 years, we have been "parents" to some fish. The fish were nice, until their home got too slimy, and that was enough for me to put up the CLOSED sign on our pet shelter. I am perfectly okay with this. Jeff says one day we'll have to get a dog (you know, for the kids). I have already practiced putting my foot down.
My family did have pets growing up: two dogs, "Bucky" and "Molly." I couldn't tell you what breed they were, and I do admit to being secretly relieved when my sister (though you could NEVER tell now) was so frightened as a child by Bucky that he had to go live with my grandparents. It's not that I hated all animals. I just didn't want them around me.
Is it horrible for me to not want pets? The way things are in this world (i.e. We may, conceivably, be the only people we know our age who don't have a pet to take with us to the Home Depot.), you would think we were horrible people for not wanting to open our home to pets. Don't try to change me. I'm not afraid of them, and I don't need one of my own to change my mind. I am just not an animal person.
Jeff's not a pet person, either, and he can be frequently heard saying, "Why do people have to take their dogs everywhere with them?" This is music to my ears, really. But Jeff's case is a little bit different than mine. He grew up on a farm. There's a big trophy in the garage with a pig perched atop from the time in high school when he took his grand champion pig to state.
Recently his mother gave us a bunch of his 4H ribbons, and Jeff said I was not to even think about getting rid of the blue ribbons he had for showing animals in junior high school. And, of course, we just spent 13 hours on a bus in Alaska trying to catch video of a wolf, some bears, and a moose in Denali National Park (That part was pretty cool, I must admit.).
So Jeff, despite his shared interest in not having to clean up doggie doo on our carpets, really amazes me with his fascination for animals. Not the tamed ones, mind you; he'd rather spend an afternoon feeding the cows on his parents' farm than teaching any pet of ours to "roll over." And on our recent trip to Alaska, I really did think Jeff might start crying if he didn't get to snap a photo of a certain bald eagle we saw perched in a tree. You should see our photo albums; they are full of strange animals that would never have a place in our home.
Then it should probably come as no surprise that, since we live a block from the lake, we randomly have "wild" animals around our house. We've had ducks in our front yard on occasion. We've had sea gulls flying overhead. Squirrels: check. A snake: check. Rabbits: too many to count. And yes, there was that time when Jeff managed to secure a skunk in a foot trap who had burrowed underneath his shed in the back yard. I think we have pictures of all of these creatures.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when Jeff came charging into the house recently, asking for the camera. "This is so cool!" he said, with the enthusiasm I would expect from one of our preschool-aged nephews. The subject of the photo: the turtle, in the picture above. And yes, that is a quarter next to the turtle. I love my husband!
