Menagerie

I'm not really an “animal person.” I like animals well enough... I guess I should really say that I like dogs and cats; but I'm suspicious of other creatures. Those things are out to eat you.

I hasten to add that this is not my parents' fault. I grew up with dogs and cats, hamsters and parakeets, an unfortunate rabbit, and other small animals. My parents took me to my grandparents' farm in the summers where I could spend time with chickens and cows. With an upbringing like that, you would expect that I would have grown up to be a veterinarian.

I blame my sister.

She was critter-crazy. She didn't just love dogs and cats, hamsters and parakeets. She loved everything. She rode horses when she got the chance (horses want to kill you and then you stomp your body into the dirt). She loved rabbits (some strange kind of love that involved trapping the terrified bunny with a lawnmower so she could hold the wild, rabies-ridden thing). She loved lizards (and she didn't love lizards in some normal way that involved putting the lizard in a cage - she would get two small lizards to bite her on the earlobes so that she could wear them as earrings).

I'm sure you can understand how living with a lizard lunatic would put me off my game. I'm convinced that was the thing that made me suspicious of anything with fur, feathers, or scales.

And that stupid hamster bit my finger.

Jack “Siegfried and Roy” Parker