Linking up with MamaKat today, answering the prompt: Tell us about a pet.

Okay, so I’m totally cheating here, because this was the shortest “pet ownership” on record, but hey, creative license.
I’m not competent at caring for pets. Or any living, growing thing, for that matter. God knows why I ever thought I’d be able to raise children, because my caregiving track record is hella bad.
In my lifetime, I’ve killed 7,000 plants, at least 20 fish (accidentally!), assassinated a hamster, given a baby duck a heart attack, and found Carnage in the Cage when my pet gerbil, Laverne, ate my sister’s gerbil, Shirley. Clearly, gerbil roommates do not go on wacky adventures and work at the Schotz brewing company together. Gerbils are Norman Bates-type roomies. Who knew?
Now that I think about it, some of my roommates in college bore an uncanny resemblance to Hannibal the Cannibal Laverne.
One of my more traumatic pet capers involved driving Wallace, the cat on a suicide mission, to the pound. HEY. That cat K.O.’ed three Apple computers in a year, gnawing compulsively on electrical cords, and I was on a teacher’s salary, so my conscience is clean.
I do feel bad about the hamster, though. In fact, the only thing I can bring myself to use that Le Crueset Dutch Oven for now is for foot fungus treatments. Don’t judge. Foot fungus happens. Yeasty, beasty foot fungus. Note to self: shower shoes at the gym are a neccessity.
Off topic…sorry.
Anyways, about the shortest-living pet ever.
Scene: Advanced Biology (yep, the same gig where the Great Rat Dissection took place)…but this time, it was Get the Goldfish Drunk Day!
Perpetrators: Me and my lab partner/friend Stacey C..
Victim: Goldie the Goldfish. (crikey, were we really that unoriginal? *hangs head in shame*)
Here’s the rub: students are assigned a goldfish, which is in a bowl of meticulously measured water and instructed to use a dropper-thingy (is it any wonder I didn’t become a scientist?) to dispense drops of alcohol into the fishbowl.
The scientific method here is to closely monitor how much alcohol goes into the water and to report, in fishy detail, how it affects your specimen.
Stacey and I kinda felt jealous of Goldie as we plopped our little boozy drops into her habitat. Nobody ever let us get drunk in class! Why do fish have all the fun?
Pretty soon, our classmates were cackling, watching their drunken goldfish swim sideways and crooked and knocking into the glassy barriers of the fishbowl. Some talented dudes even swam upside down.
Goldie: Nothin’.
Stacey and I peered into the bowl, bewildered.
“Is something wrong with her?” Stacey asked.
“I dunno. She seems fine.” We wandered over to the other fishbowls, observing, and then returned to Goldie.
“She’s not drunk at all,” Stacey said.
And then it hit me. “Ohmigod. Stace. This fish is Irish.”
“They have fish from different parts of Europe?”
“Shut up! This fish is definitely Irish. I betcha, Goldie can drink all these fish under the table and still walk home after shirking the bar tab.”
“Okay…what should we do?”
I grabbed the dropper. “We give her a few more Guinness stouts.”
Plop, plop, plopplopplop.
We waited, eyes glued to the bowl.
Goldie started to perk right up (further proof that she was Irish, because all of the other fish were dragging fins).
“Now we’re talkin’” I said, scribbling data into my notebook. “How many drops did we put in again?”
“Um. Dude.”
“Was it nine? Ten?”
“Dude.” Stacey tapped her pencil sharply on the bowl. “Look.”
Goldie had gone from Irish Jig to floating in about 2 seconds.
“Shit.”
“I guess we flunk this lab, huh?”
“Hey, at least she died happy. Right?”
Of course right. She was Irish.
{ 20 comments }

