My First Pets

My first pet was named George. George was a moth.

I'd never had a pet before. A lot of South Florida homes come with jalousie windows, which are parallel glass louvers you open and close by turning a small crank at the bottom. Our apartment had at least one set in each room. As with many homes, the lower halves of ours were frosted, and the rest were clear. Security from peeping toms and all that. I know, I know, just wait -- there's a point to this.

So one afternoon in 1960, when I was about to turn seven, my bedroom jalousies were open when a moth flew against the screen and decided to rest there in the shade. I don't have to tell you Miami can get pretty hot. I started talking to the moth, and once you start talking to a bug, you run the risk of anthropomorphizing it and thinking it can talk back. Calling it George only complicates things further. So we had a fine conversation all that afternoon, me telling George about the travails of first grade and George recounting his adventures in the great outdoors and asking if I had any sweaters lying around. I knew we were friends because he didn't want to fly away. Finally it grew dark, and I had grown too attached to him to let him go now. So I closed the jalousies, which gave him just enough room to flit up and down without getting squished. I told him we could talk some more tomorrow before I left for school.

Well, I'm sure you saw this coming. When I woke up the next morning, George was lying upside down on the window sill. I had a bad feeling about it -- I was dumb enough to shut him in overnight but not too dumb to realize he wasn't asleep. When my mother asked why I was crying at the breakfast table, I told her George died. You know about being six -- I just assumed the whole world knew what I was talking about. So I showed her George's inert little body and asked her if we could bury him in the yard, maybe wrap him in a nice cardigan. I don't remember what she actually did -- probably just opened the jalousies and blew through the screen so it would fall outside. But she was evidently touched by this star-crossed friendship, and she did the next best thing to throwing a burial. She promised I could get a real pet.

On Saturday we went to a bright, airy shop filled with ferns and garden implements and small friendly creatures that included fish, gerbils, iguanas, and birds. My mother had never been partial to pets (you never saw pets traipsing around in Better Homes and Gardens), so this would be a sacrifice for her.

Then we saw the turtles. In her mind she must have been thinking, OK, these wouldn't be expensive to maintain, they're not related to rats, they won't shed skin all over the place, and they can't talk back. These were box turtles, a prehistoric creature that lived way back when they could be sold legally before fear of salmonella overcame us all. (I mean way back, even before Justin Bieber's voice broke.) They looked so cute in their 18-inch, clear plastic wading pools. My mother asked me if I'd like one, and I said I'd like two. This time, my pet wasn't going to croak on me in the middle of the night, not with another turtle there to keep an eye on it and vice versa.

So we brought them home and set the wading pool in the kitchen window where there was plenty of light. I named them Jimmy and Johnny. (Funny, I never thought about them when I used to eat at Jimmy John's.) I tapped their tiny food canister over the water promptly every day. I picked them up and put them down again. (Not too much you can do with a turtle.)

Well, maybe you saw this coming, too. Jimmy was faster than Johnny and always got to the food first. Johnny died of starvation, and then Jimmy died of loneliness. At least that's how my parents explained it to me. They probably came up with this story because that way I wouldn't feel responsible. They must have thought I blamed myself for George's demise. The irony there is I didn't blame myself half as much for that as I blamed my mother for blowing him off the window ledge. I mean, who does that to a beloved pet?

Four years later, we owned our own house, and my father came home from work one afternoon with a brand new puppy, a cross between a German shepherd and a husky (a Gerky?). My mother named him Eli. Right away it was, "George and Jimmy and Johnny who?" Mom kept Eli on the porch and in the back yard (she never saw any dogs in Good Housekeeping), so that's where my younger sister and I spent as much of our time as possible. Eli was the best friend we ever had.

Well. If I told you what happened to Eli, there wouldn't be enough Puffs Plus in the world. Suffice it to say the story would make Old Yeller look like A Night at the Opera, and we never had another family pet after that. Oh, except for the bunny Terry brought home from high school one day. I don't remember how she'd gotten it or what she thought she was going to do with it in our mother's house. Mom told her it could stay overnight in the small utility room where she kept the washer and dryer, but in the morning it had to go.

So my sister feeds the bunny in the utility room before going out with friends for the evening. Mom explicitly tells her to be sure the door to the room is closed before she leaves. Apparently Terry didn't hear her. An hour later, our folks are watching TV when my mother looks down and sees the bunny sitting between her couch and my father's recliner, watching TV with them. What makes this story precious (and absolutely true) is that they were watching Wild Kingdom at the time.

I'll tell you what brought these memories to mind. Not long ago, I found a tiny spider web in the space between one side of my window air conditioner and the window frame. The spider in it was almost kind of cute, no larger than a mosquito. However, I guess I inherited my mother's distaste for things growing in her house, so I came back a few minutes later, saw that the spider was gone, and brushed away the web. I figured I was doing the little intruder a favor, since she wasn't going to find any bugs in my kitchen.

About an hour later, I return to the kitchen, and guess what -- same spider, different web. I absolutely marveled at the sheer chutzpah and tenacity of my newfound friend. She certainly showed me who was boss! She had earned the right to stay as long as she liked, and I even wished I had some bugs for her to dine on.

By morning she had moved on, and I kept the web up for the rest of the day in case she missed me. Oh, well. It was a perfectly good web. Maybe I should have placed a roommate ad in Bug Club Magazine.*


*A real publication put out by the Amateur Entomologists' Society (AES).