We cant’ find the algae eater is one of the first things out of my mother’s mouth when I recently stopped by. This comment brings back memories of “And please don’t send the big truck.” My family’s motto is “Making Memories”. When it comes to critters, we seem to do a lot of that.
My parents have a fish tank and they somehow lost the algae eater in the tank. I think it must have been playing with them because it finally decided to show itself when the pulled the rock out that it was hiding under. This is entirely different and much less eventful from what turned out to be a flying baby squirrel incident.
The squirrel event started with the strangest sound in the dryer area. It sounded like something was in the vent hose. The scratching and scraping and all. It was a little weird. Now where my parents live, they have been known to have a bat or two. Unfortunately for the bats and myself, we don’t have a very good history. Somewhere in the mountains of southern California there is a bat flying around with a very old headache.
So the squirrel.
Well, we couldn’t figure out what to do and try as we might we really couldn’t get the thing to hang out in an area of the dryer vent tubing that we could trap it. So Mom decided she would call someone. Who do you call with a problem like that at nine o’clock at night. Apparently the Fire Department. I do remember one of the things that she said to the dispatcher was something along the lines of not sending the ladder truck or at least not using sirens.
I guess the Firemen were bored. We got the big truck. No sirens. They got the squirrel. One of them took it home to his kids. Years later, when my father had a health issue that required the paramedics, one of the paramedics had been to the house on the flying squirrel incident.
We have had a variety of pets. Guppies. A dog. Two farm cats. One of which thought my father looked like the perfect midwife for her kittens. The other gave birth a few days later in the same box with the others. The only male kitten out of both litters, turned out to be the runt. He didn’t make it. We figured he opened his eyes, saw he had all those sisters and decided it wasn’t worth it. My sister had a hamster and a jumping, leaping Angel fish. We as a family had a couple of white lab rats.
Most recently we’ve had birds mostly. It started with one that literally came to my mother out of a tree in southern California. We then acquired one that had been walking down the street in San Diego. We moved from southern California to the Seattle, Washington area and the thing with the birds just escalated. My parents joined the bird club. We had and aviary of finches in the kitchen. Mom even hand fed a baby finch that got kicked out of the nest. Yes. Finch. Yes, the little birds that tend to be about an inch long.
Then there were the squirrels and butterscotch brownies. As best we can tell the squirrels thought mom’s butterscotch brownies were great stuff. We didn’t know squirrels could make those sorts of sounds. They went a little orgasmic for them. Good thing I guess, none of the family were able to eat them. Of course after that they tended to come nearly knock on the back door for food.
So by the time we’ve had all this, moved to Florida and had the flying squirrel issue, and geckos in the house, well the announcement that they can’t find the algae eater doesn’t really require much thought to deal with. It’s called, get the flash light, make sure he didn’t decide to do acrobatics and help look for him.
I once saw on Master Piece Theater a production of Gerald Durrell’s book “My Family and Other Animals”, it was so comforting I had to buy the book. My favorite line is towards the end as they board the board to return to England from their stay in Corfu. “On the little card, in the column headed Descrition of Passengers had been written, in neat capitals: ONE TRAVELLING CIRCUS AND STAFF.”
Life is an adventure to be lived and along the way we should all be Making Memories.
Cheers.
Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.
