Taddy

Kids always say things like: "When I'm a mom, I'm gonna let my kids watch TV whenever they want." or "When I'm a dad, I'm never gonna put my kids in time-out." I have heard my own kids instruct me on how they are going to do things different when they are grown-ups. It makes me laugh. One of the things I never said as a kid was "When I'm a mom, I'm gonna let my kids have all the reptiles and amphibians that they want." For the past year, Ray-Ray has been asking me over and over for a pet snake, frog, or lizard or any other little creature.

I keep reminding him that we have a dog. I grew up loving dogs. We had dogs when I was a kid but they were all prematurely killed by cars, or they ran away, or some other unfortunate accident occurred. I convinced my husband, who doesn't really appreciate dogs, that it would be good for our kids to have a pal. So we got Midnight. The only thing I didn't think about when I was a kid was who picked up the poop. Had I thought about it, I would have thought twice about getting the dog because I am the one who does it. Dave claims that I made a deal with him that if we got a dog, he'd never have to pick up poop. I do not remember ever making that deal.

Anyways, back to Ray asking me for little creatures. I have repetitively told him no. Why? Because having those animals became a childhood nightmare for me. My dad loved having pets (his childhood dream). We had terrariums full of frogs, newts, lizards and iguanas when I was a kid. At first, I really loved looking those little creatures. However, those creatures made big stinky messes. We had newts and salamanders in our terrarium, but their bowl of water was buried into the habitat making it impossible to take it out and clean. The water would soon become a black stinking cesspool. My dad soon wearied of cleaning it and it became the job of either one of my brothers or me. The way to clean this bowl was to siphon it out with a tube into a bucket. I was maybe only 10 or 11 years old when I started cleaning out the newt bowl. I'd have to suck suck suck the tube until the water started going and then quickly put the tube in the bucket. Only I wasn't so skilled. I got a mouth full of black newt juice time after time. So Gross.

Also, all those little creatures got hungry a lot. My dad at first bought crickets at the pet store and we'd watch and count how many each lizard or frog ate. Then, my dad got tired of buying crickets so he'd assign each of us to go catch anywhere from 10 to 20 crickets each. We did pretty good because there were lots of crickets in Arizona where we lived at the time, but we got tired of catching crickets pretty fast. I started to hate catching crickets.

Then, the horrible death of those creatures was inevitable. Our iguana got cooked by the hot burning sun when my mom put the terrarium outside one day. Apparently she was sick of the stink. We were all pretty devastated by the fried little guy. I also remember catching wild little lizards off of our backyard wall and putting them into our terrarium only to feel like a complete murderess when I saw the large lizards we already owned eat them up. I didn't know lizards were cannibals. I also saw our terrarium get infested with ants that came in sneakily and started biting our frogs until they died.

After all the above, can you blame me for saying no to Ray? Since I wasn't about to buy him any reptiles or amphibians, Ray found some at Zion National Park a couple weeks ago. We convinced him to let the lizards go free, but when he caught a tadpole, he was so excited about seeing it develop into a frog. I caved. He brought the thing home and David bought him a little plastic tank. We had him for about one week. The little guy, lovingly called Taddy, had grown his hind legs and his little front legs and his tail was starting to recede when he went belly up. Poor little Ray found him dead one morning and cried so hard on and off all day about his Taddy. He felt responsible for his death because he was sure he had touched him too much, or fed him too much or something. Feeling really sad for Ray's sorrow, Dave bought Ray two little African dwarf frogs. (Here we go!) They are pretty cool little guys until they DIE. One did today and Ray's sorrow over Taddy was replicated. So, Dave came home tonight with two more frogs. Oh geez. Ray is so excited and I am happy he is happy, but it's a hard cruel world for these little creatures. Are we going to keep buying another one every time it dies? This was not in my "When I'm a mom I'm gonna..." plan.