Because I Needed A Reminder

Have I mentioned yet how not-animal-people we are?  It seems I forgot momentarily.

For preschool a couple of weeks ago we talked about animals people keep as pets and I had the brilliant plan to visit a couple of pet stores to see the animals in real life.  Cuz, you know, since we’re not animal people so we don’t actually own any of our own.

I looked up the address of a local shelter where we could see some dogs and cats, wrestled buckled the kids into the car, and we drove over to ogle.  As I stopped the car Peanut excitedly pointed out the small-ish doggie looking at us through the front window.   I unpacked the kids, holding Wingnut on my hip, and opened the door to the shelter.  There, right at the door was a very large, gray dog.  And by large I mean it was looking Peanut in the eyeballs.  She, or course, shrieked and began, literally, climbing up my body to get away from the horribly terrifying dog.  The dog didn’t so much as sniff her let along bark or lick.

The people at the shelter, seeing how freaky-out-y my daughter was, corralled the dog into another area of the shelter.  There was a chair in the front room so I set Wingnut on it while I tried to calm Peanut down.  It took a while and she never let go of me but I did manage to get her to stop wailing.  In the mean time there were a few smaller dogs milling around watching our dramatic little show and one came over to inspect Wingnut’s shoe.  Wingnut shrieked and began reaching for me.  I bent over and hefted him onto my hip again.  So there I stood in the lobby of an animal shelter, Peanut on one hip, Wingnut on the other, both shrieking and sobbing, while quiet, friendly, little dogs wandered around my legs wondering what might the matter be with the two loud monkeys clinging to their mama.

Needless to say, we didn’t stay long at the animal shelter.  We did poke out heads into the back rooms where most of the animals were kept so we could see how many doggies and kitties were there and what they all looked like, but that was pretty much it.  Peanut wouldn’t get down from her perch until we were right next to our car again.

There was another local petshop nearby that looked like it had some cool stuff so we stopped there on our way home.  A few steps inside a little bitty dog came prancing over to greet us and Peanut began her climb of Mount Mommy again so to head her off I bent down to pet and talk to the nice little dog.  Peanut, seeing it was friendly, decided perhaps it wasn’t a mean scary dog (as long as it kept it’s head away from her) after all.  She gave it a little pet and giggled sheepishly about trying to climb me again.

After spending a minute with the dog we moved on to the rest of the pet shop.  First up were the lizards, turtles, snakes, crabs, and spiders.  Peanut LOVED looking at them as long as she didn’t have to get too close.  I can’t say I blame her.  I don’t like getting too close to those creatures either, even in their terrariums.

We moved on to the birds, saw the guinea pigs (with a baby only three days old!), ferrets, hamsters, and bunnies, but the biggest hit was the fish.  Peanut loved seeing the aquariums full of colorful fish flitting around and after visiting all the different animal sections again she kept asking to go back to see the fish some more.  She’s been very into Finding Nemo lately so that may have something to do with her interest.  Peanut wasn’t the only one into the fish.  I let Wingnut down to wander around and he cruised along the wall of tanks, spastically pointing at the fish, and gleefully slapping the glass (I’m sure both the pet store owners and the fish loved that).

We spent quite a bit of time at that pet shop and it seemed to make up for the horrors experienced at the shelter.  Despite the fish love I don’t anticipate acquiring pets any time in the future.  We did fish once upon a time during the first couple of years we were married and we weren’t all that great at it.  One of our fish even committed suicide.  Doesn’t that say something about our pet-keeping skillz; or lack thereof?  I appears we’re just not cut out to be pet owners and honestly, I’m okay with that.