Let's BLOG God Giveth and God Taketh

God giveth and God taketh.  That goes for pets at least.  And Fayville has had its fair share of fur, feather, and scales.  All in the name of caring for God’s great creatures.  And losing most of my brain cells.

It began when God gaveth us our first dog, Deion. Then God taketh him away, much too early, at the age of nine.   We spent the first year of our daughter’s life commuting a state away for six rounds of doggie chemo.   

Fayville grieved for a quite a few years until we opened our hearts and home to a beagle from Louisiana, who had just spent HIS eighth life on Hurricane Katrina.  Unfortunately, Neville the Beagle had a tendency, as all hounds do, to run away.  In the four short years we had him, he spent three nights in Doggie Jail and made three lost distance phonecalls from Alabama.  He was the local rebel without a cause and had us in trouble with the law more than my infamous “old lady bike up in a tree” incident.

Then came a tank full of fish, this having satisfied a yearning Robert had always had as an avid fish admirer and seafood lover. Why,  he once tried to save their sorry scaly souls during a power outage.  What he had not realized is that leaving a lit candle by a fishbowl would soon have them belly up and boiled to a nice chowder. 

 

Next came a little yellow birdy that our five year old had asked of Santa Claus.  Course she ended up being the Black Widow of parakeets.  For each and every time she lured an innocent male bird into her nest, she ended up with blood on her talons.  Debra Winger would have had a field day.

Up to the plate next,  was a lizard followed by a pair of green toed newts.  Fayville soon discovered that purchasing live crickets every week was as fun as shoveling dog crap into plastic grocery bags and all those scaly friends hit the road heading for Death Valley.

From there it was the occasional snapping turtle in a Barbie pool for a day, a tree frog in a box, and the array of feathered friends visiting Mommy’s birdhouse. By that I mean ducks,  the random turkey and a tribe of raccoon.

And let’s not forget the Grizzly Visitor of the Great Flood of Spring 2006. What started as Robert bringing our Neville inside in the wee hours of the night, resulted in a 200 pound Yogi Bear descending down a backyard tree and heading due east and Robert, wearing only his triple XL boxer shorts, fleeing toward the back porch and into my arms, the echo of his screams, “BEAR! BEAR!” only a memory.

Still, somehow we longed for more torture, I mean companionship, so we hit up Petfinder.com for a Puppy Max from Tennessee and a Miss Silvia from Oklahoma.  They came to us abandoned and broken-hearted and since then have filled our hearts with more veterinarian bills and trashbag surprises than we could have ever imagined.

It was last winter we invited the most unlikely of all pets: a GRAMPA. He came with own set of wheels, a bowling bowl, and dancing shoes.  Best pet yet until we discovered he brought along a souvenir: a BLACK LABRADOR that pulls like a mule and sheds  like a polar bear in spring. 

As if a trio of  pups was not enough, the most recent pets to join the Fayville Animal Sanctuary were a pair of teddybear hamsters.  The Easter Bunny had played a trick on Mommy and Daddy Fay and we welcomed Lily and Buddy.  Turns out Buddy is more of a stallion than a five ounce rodent.

Seventeen year old Petsmart Boy with his bicep of reptilian tattoo advised me, “The Easter Bunny,”  to adopt BABY hamsters.  They would adapt to a new home well, be socialized quickly and my kids would probably be able to handle them. Course Lizard Man could not identify either hamster’s genitalia five minutes to closing time but he gave me his EXPERT ANALYSIS decision that “uh, they’re probably both girls.  Just watch ‘em.  And let them play.  They’re cute when they play.”  I left there with the two little jackrabbits assuming that Lizard Man probably liked to see his three foot long python “play” with the leftover stock.

Two months at home, the furry pair began to fight.  There was lots of Buddy sniffing tail and Lily reacting with many a paw slap to the nose.  After a few nights of heavy squeaking, Lily left me a note one morning and demanded she move facilities.  She had packed up all her stuffing and hamster treats and was tapping her foot by the cage door.  

Life apart was quite pleasant actually.  Except for Buddy the Stallion.  Lily had adjusted to her new apartment and was spending most of her time in the penthouse suite relaxing and nibbling on carrots.  Buddy, however, had grown restless and lost much sleep trying to bite his way through his newly found jail cell of a home.  You see he was a lonely bachelor in his prime and the only action he got now was a maze of plastic tunnels that led to nowhere and beyond.  For him, it was HAMSTER HELL. 

Ironically, the same week that I had explored a science unit on LIFE CYCLES with my third grade class, I arrived home to a miniature army of baby HAMSTERS in Lily’s food dish.   All sitting there squeaking and squealing as Momma Hamster recovered.   I didn’t catch how many babies were in that bowl since she worked fast to collect them all and return them to a nest she had made in the back of Melrose Place there.  Mommy  has spent most of her second day laying atop her litter of bastards and I have still yet to count how many there actually are.

I did agree,however,  to find Lily a good attorney to write up a series of restraining orders.  I don’t blame her though.  Imagine You.  A two month old hamster, bullied, betrayed, and assaulted most of your young life and one day you mosey over to the food bowl in your cute little hamster home, and just as you’re nibbling on a kernel of corn, you go into convulsions and find yourself spewing eight nuggets out your asshole.

So here we are, the Fayville Animal Sanctuary in June of 2013.  I have many goals and ambitions for the future of our grand establishment, foremost being to GET RID of my hamster army,  but I also have a few regrets.  One being that we should have invested in some good farmland up north and the other wishing we developed some other kinds of hobbies like skydiving or eating cracked glass like the regulars on  TLC's hit show 'My Strange Addiction.' And yet my biggest regret is the smallest of all inconceivable notions.

I fear the trouble all started after having installed Buddy his new toy: the HAMSTER WHEEL.  Poor Lily the Hamster didn’t even see it coming.  He even had a mirror installed on the ceiling. Who knew such a device would lead to just another dark chapter in one of JJ Abrams bestsellers.

half-a-mom