From the Keyboard
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?