My New Pet: an article by: GF Willmetts.
I had a choice of two pets recently. Both in eggs. Well, the emotionally dead man at the door claimed his egg was a pod but didn’t really fancy it. Who wants giant peas? Looked too big and he insisted I plant it in the garden. Told him to try my neighbour. After all, he’s got a couple triffids in his garden and an African strangler plant that he feeds meat balls to.
So, I chose the large egg instead. At least it looked like an egg and not a pea pod. It came with a warning not to stand over it when it decides to hatch and keep it in a glass cage. When hatch, it doesn’t need to be fed, just needs a supply of air. No food. No water. What a perfect pet, only bettered by a cactus for low maintenance. Well, maybe a mogwai but you never know when midnight is in not to give it water. No one said I couldn’t give him a shower that time, did they?
Anyway, I ensured the glass cage is big enough for it to get some exercise, and waited for it to hatch. Didn’t it take a long time and when I finally looked inside the box, it jumped out and surprised me. Fortunately, I got the lid down quick and wondered how I would get the shell out.
Whatever it was was extremely mobile and likes to run about on its 8 legs looking the cage over, poking its tongue out at me for fun. I had to keep reminding myself it was an endangered species and quite rare. After all, I don’t want to stare at an empty cage.
I read the instructions a few time. If you do decide to take it out of its cage, ensure you are wearing a suitable protective suit and keep the doors and windows shut so it doesn’t escape. You would do that with any animal you seriously wanted to look after. I was told, letting it wrap its tail around your neck is generally not considered an act of friendship. Neither is it letting it try to kiss you on the lips. My neighbour was rather emotionally dead recently when I suggested he come and see it. I was expecting him to act like a pantomime dame, saying it was behind me but he didn’t seem that interested.
What was most surprising one morning was finding it dead by my bed. Maybe it didn’t like having so much space to play around in. It must have got out somehow as there was yellow acid melting the plastic.
Since then, and over the past couple days, I’ve had some stomach pains…
(c) GF Willmetts 2020
All rights reserved
Be good to your pets
and next time I’ll get a lead
and take it for walkies.
