Critters I Have Known, Part One

PREFATORY REMARKS: As a sort of memory/writing exercise, Barbara, here are some kinds of animals I have lived with. I omit the dogs and cats in my life, of which there've been many, because dog and cat writing can get sentimental, or something. Maybe I haven't had enough life experience to talk about dogs and cats. I'm still in school. At any rate, come on a safari through my mind! Sit back, relax, and thrill to...

THE ORNERY DOUBLE YELLOW HEADED AMAZONIAN PARROT

My father used to tell us in wistful tones about how as a little boy he always wanted a parrot. He evinced a similar yen for a llama, a donkey, peacocks, and other things. Right now, as it happens, he's on a dachshund campaign. But for some reason, my mother took him up on the parrot, surprising him with Chico on his forty-somethingth birthday, when I was about twelve. Dad was initially delighted, until it became obvious that Chico despised my father, and, indeed, all men. If a man approaches Chico's cage, Chico gets the crazy eye and screeches with rage. Though to be fair, Chico often enjoys screaming, for various reasons. One of his favorite utterances is high-pitched screaming interrupted by a raspy, disapproving "Chico, stop it! Chico, hush!"

About ten years ago, Chico bit the crap out of my sister Annie as she rescued him from a tree branch. He damn near took her finger off! And the thing is, he didn't even wanna be in that tree. He'd flown up there on a whim, but then spent several hours calling for help.

Chico is now over twenty years old. He may live another fifty years, for all we know. During a particularly trying and confrontational period of Alex and Annie's adolescence, my father liked to threaten that unless they'd stop bickering, upon his and my mother's deaths, Chico would be willed to Alex. This was a dual punishment, see, Alex not wanting the bird, and Annie being very fond of him. But that was before he bit her.
It should be noted that we have no idea what sex Chico is.


THE TRAGIC CHINCHILLA
Annie talked my parents into getting her a chinchilla when she was about ten. We already had two dogs and a cat-and-a-half, but clearly, we needed more animals. Chilly the Chinchilla did not bite, that I recall, or smell bad. He was spectacularly soft. But he was quite sensitive. So sensitive, in fact, that our standard poodle Pippin killed him accidentally by gently carrying him around in his mouth. A very sad day for all of us, including Pippin, who never meant any harm to man or beast. I still feel sad when I see one of those coats.


VARIOUS HAMSTERS

Not surprisingly, the Fisch children had hamsters at some point. Frankly, it hardly seems worth mentioning, except that one was named Nicholas, named thusly by me because of Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. He was fairly short-lived. Also bitey. Once I dropped him in the pool and then resucitated him with a hair dryer.


THE WILY FERRET

Annie got a ferret called Ellie during college. Ellie wasn't very fond of any of us, except possibly Annie. It was hard to tell, actually, what Ellie felt about anything, but at any rate I don't think she bit Annie. Ellie liked to burrow into the couch cushions, lie in wait, and then bite anybody's ass who sat down. An undiscerning biter, Ellie once underwent emergency surgery to have a fragment of beach towel removed from her colon. When Annie went to study abroad, she boarded Ellie with a professional ferret activist lady. My sister's friends who accompanied her describe this lady's house as being phantasmagorically overrun with dozens of ferrets--ferrets jumping out of the drapes, ferrets slinking around your feet, stinking to high heaven, haunting the shower, biting each other and people and things. This ferret house appears in some of my dreams.



VAGUELY DISTURBING SUGAR GLIDERS

I lived with two sugar gliders soon after moving to New York, in '00. A sugar glider is a tiny flying squirrel marsupial type critter. They were the property of my roommates M. and J., two exceptionally cute first cousins from Queens, only sons of two sisters from Sicily. M. and J. worked out a lot, and were very clothes-conscious, dated models, and went clubbing a lot and had great hair. M. was a chef, J. a model/musican/bartender/photographer. M. and J. and the sugar gliders and I all lived together in a tiny, tiny apartment on 3rd street, right across from the Hell's Angels HQ in the East Village, if y'all know where that is. TINY apartment. M., the chef, slept in a converted closet.

Anyway, these sugar glider things were apparently all the rage in the fashion industry for about five seconds in '00, and cost an ungodly amount of money. The female was called J.R. and the male was called...something. J.R. and what's-his-name were nocturnal, and had noisy, rapid sex all night long. Come to think of it, so did my roommates and their dates. I would often wake on a Saturday morning to find various lissome, barely-clothed, extremely tall young women who'd just arrived recently from Croatia or Jamaica or Maine and hoped J. (the model/photographer etc) could help them with their portfolio. J., meanwhile, was hoping that all the sugar-glider sex would yield more sugar gliders, which he could then sell to other fashion-animal-victims in order to keep his lifestyle as a cocaine glider going.

Do sugar gliders bite? You bet your ass. Also, they fly, sort of. It was always difficult to get them back in the cage once they got out, leading to lots of heated arguments between M. and J. and me and, sometimes, models, on how to best accomplish this.

**COMING ATTRACTIONS FOR PART 2!!!**

ADMIRAL BIRD I AND ADMIRAL BIRD II











BUD











CINNAMON










BIGFOOT






HARRY





BLUE TAIL