My Apartment is a
Friggin' Zoo
Many of you probably have pets at home. At my real home
back in Minneapolis, I have a dog. A dog is a normal pet. I
like animals as much as the next guy, but some animals are
pets, and some are not. Emily (the girlfriend), on the
other hand, has a much different idea of what constitutes a
normal or abnormal pet. Emily does NOT keep normal pets.
See, she works at Petsmart, and really loves animals. I
mean reeeealy loves animals. Maybe even like that. There's
always some new damn animal she wants.
"Hey Alex, can I get a Puppy?"
"No."
"Hey Alex, can I get a Ball Python?"
"No."
"Hey Alex, can I get an Eyelash Crested Gecko?"
"A what?"
"So I can get a puppy then."
"I'll stab you, bitch."
But I told her I'd write an article about her crazy pets,
so here it goes, in order, from the kind of things normal
people keep, to the kind of shit that only Ted Bundy could
love.
The Fish
Alright, this one is fine. Totally normal people keep fish.
Shit, even I might keep fish on my own without Emily
around. The only problem is that fish are boring. Way
boring. We've got two tanks. The first one has Bettas (also
known to the less-educated as siamese fighting fish) in it.
The things about Bettas is that they are barely fish, and
definetly not much better than furniture. Bettas hate each
other with the burning passion of a thousand suns, and if
they can, they will take every opportunity to fight to the
death. As you can see in this diagram, the only thing
separating Señor Spicy from Señor Cranky is a sheet of
clear plastic.
Because of this, they spend all day, every day, pissed off
at each other, but they can't do anything about it. It'd be
like dangling the corpse of Geraldo Rivera from a rod
attached to my head in such a way that I'm too far away to
desecrate it. Complicated? Observe this simple diagram.
If your hatred of Geraldo Rivera is anywhere near mine, you
can imagine how the fish feel. You may also notice that the
bowl if filthy and covered in algae. This is because I am
required by relationship contract not to give a shit about
the cleanliness of her fish, and she is lazy. But the
Bettas are not the main event when it comes to Emily's
fish. No sir. Standing like a wood and glass monolith in
the corner is the big-ass fishtank.
See, I like the big-ass fishtank and all, but the
individual fish are so...impersonal. There's a bajillion
little fish in there, and the only ones that I could pick
out of a lineup would be the angelfish, because they're
frickin' huge next to all the other wiener-y little guys.
It's nice to look at and all, but these fish are a bunch of
little assholes. It's 37 gallons of battle royale. They
spend all day chasing each other around at top speed,
trying to catch one another for no reason I can discern
except maybe that they're trying to commit fish rape. But
shit, even if one of the girl fishes manages to get herself
knocked up, somebody's still going to chase her obese
egg-bloated body around like me chasing Rosie O'Donell, who
is probably bloated with deviled eggs. Shit, man. Nature is
hard.I'm adding more text.
The Lizard
Emily also keeps what basically amounts to a small dinosaur
in the house. Its name is Chub-Chub, and she has no idea if
it's a girl or a boy lizard because their shit isn't
dangling around on the outside. But it doesn't matter, the
thing could whup your ass, even at only about eight inches
long. See, the thing about the Mali Uromastyx is that they
have the angriest tail in all of the animal kingdom. As you
can see in the picture, it's big, heavy, and covered in
spikes. She (Emily originally called it a she before she
found out it might be a dude, so we refer to her as a she)
is not a fan of people, and if you stick anythingthing in
her tank (pencil, finger, sausage, whatever) it's going to
get the shit whipped out of it with her tail.
And she bites, too. Decidedly not the friendliest pet in
the world, and surprisingly boring as well. She just sits
in her house, or on her rock, doing nothing for at least
3/4 of the day.
There is no question in my mind that in a battle to the
death among all our pets, Chub-Chub would be the undisputed
victor, even if she fought the fish on their home turf. A
good pet to look at sometimes, but not anything you'd take
out and play with, or look at funny. She'd probably whip
through the glass and eat your face off after whipping all
your valuables into non-valuable atoms.
The Hamster
This is officially the weirdest animal anyone is going to
see, ever. A number of people own hamsters, but nobody has
got a hamster like this. What evil lurks beneath those
oh-so-colorful tubes of fun?
It is an evil like the world has never seen. An evil that
resembles a cross between a hamster and a nutsack, and
feels uncannily like an erect penis. Description got you
concerned? Then behold! Scrodinger!
Yessir, that is one genuine hamster, minus the hair. His
name is a combination of Schröedinger (the physicist), and
scrotum (where the nards are stored). Why? Because he looks
exactly like a goddamn ball-holster with legs and a face,
and Schröedinger is a funny name. Thus, Scrodinger. Not
pictured is his huge scrotum, which makes him look like a
scrotum with a scrotum. Emily bought him on a whim, and
we've spent way too fucking much money on making his house
way awesomer than ours. Christ, I don't have a fun slide,
or a lazy look-out, or whatever else the crazy named shit
he has is. But he doesn't have a Playstation. Take that,
jerk.
So how's about that? I've got a tiny zoo in my shitty
little one bedroom apartment. I blame Emily, becuase she
brings all these ornery little animals into our home. They
outnumber us like fifty to one. If they ever decide to
stage a coup, we could be in trouble except for the fact
that I outweigh all of them combined by about eight million
to one. Behold, little animals! The wrath of my feet!