My Wife Belongs In A Zoo

My wife loves animals.

You have to understand that to my wife, anything that's not human and draws breathe is an animal. Doesn't matter whether the creature has wings, feathers, fun, scales, tails, hooves, feelers or tentacles. It's an animal. She loves it.

The kids have all grown up now, so we're down to five cats, two dogs, eighteen cockatiel, two parrots and a macaw in a peach tree.

Ever meet a macaw? Large colorful bird. And clever. Very clever. A macaw can imitate almost any sound it hears. George can imitate a cat in heat, a phone ringing, a dog barking a long ways off and a refrigerator door opening. You can image the confusion answering phones that aren't ringing and checking the refrigerator door. My wife adores George. The only time I don't is when he is imitating a cockatoo shrieking. Which he does. Often.

Ever meet a cockatoo?

A single cockatoo can emit a scream which will threaten to dislodge you tympanic membrane and shatter your soul. When you get forty three of these shrieks evenly spaces (after awhile you can't help but count), you look around for something sharp. We've had two cockatoos for eight years.

Then there was the boa. She hauled it on a plane from Miami to LA cleverly concealed in a lumpy carry-on bag. Because they were cheaper in Miami.

That's true. They are cheaper in Miami. I just didn't know we were in the market for a five foot boa.

Our place has always been a refuge for unwanted animals. Anybody within twenty-five miles radius who had an unwanted anything could, and often did, drop it (them) off.

Along the way, we've had everything from raccoons to roosters. And the more exotica. Ralph, the chinchilla comes to mind.

Ever meet a chinchilla? Cute and furry. She once got the absurd notion that we would raise chinchilla. We checked out a chinchilla farm and the nice man patiently explained how to breed the animals and then how to dispatch them quickly and painlessly so we could accumulate enough pelts to begin to think of a fur.

Somewhere about halfway through this litany my wife began to pale. There was a long silence after he finished. Then she decided to take just one to see how it went. She how it went? We were clearly not going to get rich with one chinchilla. But she insisted so we brought one cute. Fury male and took him home.

Ralph lived in a roomy, split level cage in our bedroom and died of old age.

A friendly spider in the kitchen. We discovered an enterprising spider had started a web in the corner of the kitchen window frame. Now most benevolent folk who didn't want to smash a friendly spider would urge it onto the sports section and carry it outside to the garden. Right?

Wrong.

My wife decided to enshrine this particular spider and named him Clarence. Clarence lived happily for months as a card carrying member of the family menagerie with full privileges, sunning himself in the middle of his splendid wed and sumptuously feeding on fat flies provided by guess who.

An exotic Chinese rooster named Legs. Ever meet an exotic Chinese rooster? If you ever get the chance, don't. Mean. Wild with a variegated mane and long skinny legs. Legs would run up behind you and nail your ankles like a frantic woodpecker while he was standing on one leg. He could get in three licks for any one woodpecker you ever saw. And did, to anyone who came near him.

Except my wife.

And then there was Thunder. Wonderful Thunder. This was a small, gentle brown eyed horse we had for years. Our daughters could leap on Thunder like wild Apaches and ride him bare back through the hills like the wind. My wife would mount Thunder from the top of one of our short, brick fence posts on the edge of our land, ride him ten feet, then slide triumphantly to the ground as if she had just carried mail bags of Wells Fargo across trackless ranges through all kinds of weather and Indian uprisings.

Actually. So far, I've been pretty lucky. No gorilla. No octopus. No giraffe. But recently I did find her heavily pondering a quarterly someone had given her. It was called, This Australia.

Ever meet a kangaroo?