Last Fish Standing

Let me start this by saying we are not pet people. We are not even remotely close. So how I end up with so many pets I do not know. And its not like we take in these cute stray kittens, or buy a full-bred fru fru dog. We get our pets from the lake, from the street, and the latest one was rescued out of a locker in the HIGH SCHOOL BOYS FOOTBALL LOCKER ROOM.

We have our stray little dog Matty. And the stray dog we had before him was also named Matty. We can't even get original with our names. We give each pet the same name the previous one had. Who does that?!?! We've had Matty for over 8 years now. Its been the best little dog except that it finds any and every way to get out of our yard. All.The.Time. He's been escorted home in a police car. In which he rode in the front seat wagging his tail happily. We've had notes in our mailbox. "Your dog is running lose. Keep him in your yard." OH REALLY?!?! Like we don't know that? We've gotten tickets and warnings. His latest stunt is that he gets out of a hole in our fence, runs the two blocks to school, finds the hole in the elementary playground fence and hits the gold mine of little kids. Whenever I hear "Mr. B. there is a dog on the playground" come across the walkie-talkie's, I'm like "Oh crap! And drop what I'm doing and have to cart his little black and white rear home. So to all my neigbors I AM SORRY. I KNOW. We have fixed our fence. We have ghetto'd our yard up trying to plug up the holes. The dog is smarter than we are. He is a teenager. He likes to disobey his parents and run away.

Then we had slippy. The little turtle Jacob brought home from Beaver lake when he was 5. That we left in a bucket while we were at camp and thought was dead. Jacob prayed at camp for him to come back to life and he did. Praise God. That called for a big tank, supplies, etc... That turtle lived on our kitchen counter for 7 years!!!! When he died last year it was really sad. I will admit there were tears. FROM ME! We buried him in a little checkbook box in the front yard. For not being pet people, we are becoming pet people.

We got another turtle from Beaver lake. And I think we named him Slippy the 2nd. We might have tried to name him something else but we just call him Slippy. You know how some people are cat people? Well, we apparently are turtle people. Because the latest turtle we have is living in a HUGE plastic tub in Jonathan's bedroom. During football season there was a big ole' box turtle, in a bucket, IN A LOCKER, in the boys football locker room. JZ felt sorry for it because he is part of the weird turtle family. He brings it home in the front seat of his truck. He goes out and buys a huge tub, all this moss and decks out this tub that looks and smells like the Amazon forest. He keeps in at the foot of the bed. One night Matty tried to jump on the bed (in the middle of the night)and misses the bed and land in the turtle cage/tub. He can't get out. JZ wakes up to find Matty just sitting in the tub with the turtle.

Our latest collection of pets is the 11 goldfish Elisabeth got at Hallelujah night on Halloween. Actually, my little nephews and niece won them but my sister made them give the goldfish to E. (Thanks Holly). So we put them all in a bowl on the kitchen counter next to the turtle tank, where a Beta fish also lived. Most of the goldfish kicked off after a week. I don't think they could digest the cup of goldfish food E would throw in there every day. So I decided to put the last couple goldfish in the tank with the Beta and the turtle. After two days we were only down to one goldfish, Slippy the 2nd, and the Beta. (I think Jacob named him Killer.) Anyway, we had a big debate over which one ate the goldfish. We all thought the Beta did. Anyway, we started to check the tank daily to see who survived the night. The other day we woke up to find a goldfish HEAD floating at the bottom of the tank. And then, I kid you not, the Beta fish had completely disappeared out of the tank. Like, not a trace of Killer was found. I thought Beta's were supposed to be the ultimate He-Man fish. But not ours. He was a weeny. And we have one fat and happy Slippy the 2nd swimming around as the last fish standing. Except he's not a fish. He's a turtle. And for us not being pet people, we sure have alot of pet stories.