Heavy Petting
My friend Myles, also a seasoned hardware store vet, was keeping me abreast of the trade. So, what’s the biggest seller these days,
dude? I asked. Glue traps? Window caulk?
‘3/8 inch chain, to Rottweiler and pit bull owners,’ he said.
Somehow, I don’t think this is how we get back to a bullish America.
Though there may be some cute ones out there other than in the Carl books, put horns on a Rottweiler and it could star in a rodeo. As for pit bulls—Myles has seen young men walking them past the store with bricks in their mouth to strengthen their jaws. Presumably, not so they can carry home a bag of eyebolts. We’re a long way here from Old Yeller.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing trend in Ohio, even outside Myles’s neighborhood, toward owning dangerous pets, if you can call them that. Would you ‘pet’ a mongoose? They qualify as pets only by being kept in captivity. Which means one other thing: even if you put up electric fences with Joan Rivers’s face posted on them as a deterrent, these creatures will try to get out. They’re wild. And it’s been happening. In recent memory:
You expect to read about a boa constrictor gobbling someone’s chihuahua in Hollywood, or a gator drowning a 71 year-old man in Florida, because you expect fruitcakes with more money than sense to own snakes as big around as ATV tires and build condos in alligator alley. But in the corn-fed midwest, the beer gut of American common sense?
Unless you have a death wish, there’s no point in owning a creature that sees you as dinner. Personally, I have no illusions about nature: if it’s moving toward me I’m in reverse. Karma does not apply to wild animals. So what if you cried as a kid when Bambi’s mother died? Accidentally spook a grizzly while photographing the great outdoors, no previous eco-mindedness or promise of prints to the Sierra Club will buy time for a getaway. You will receive prints--on your sternum. So why put your life at risk? Buy a budgie and dye your hair blue instead.
I mean, there are such things as zoos, funded with your tax dollars, where you can observe all manner of teeth and talons up close without worrying about beating a cheetah back to your car if it doesn’t like your cologne. Not to mention slaughtering a steer for its keep.
Is it being consumed by possessions (at the risk of them consuming you) that impels us to buy dangerous animals? Or simply the illusion of mastery over nature? We forget that animals learned the ropes of survival before we did. They don’t think it’s bad manners to bite your nose off instead of rub it; they’re just doing what comes naturally. Frankly, if it were my nature to run down live prey, and I saw gramps next door taking his time to the mailbox, I wouldn’t let a little chain link bother me.
As for impressing the neighborhood, there are less potentially litigious ways of doing it than raising Komodo dragons. Though, admittedly, few discourage block parties as well.
‘3/8 inch chain, to Rottweiler and pit bull owners,’ he said.
Somehow, I don’t think this is how we get back to a bullish America.
Though there may be some cute ones out there other than in the Carl books, put horns on a Rottweiler and it could star in a rodeo. As for pit bulls—Myles has seen young men walking them past the store with bricks in their mouth to strengthen their jaws. Presumably, not so they can carry home a bag of eyebolts. We’re a long way here from Old Yeller.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a growing trend in Ohio, even outside Myles’s neighborhood, toward owning dangerous pets, if you can call them that. Would you ‘pet’ a mongoose? They qualify as pets only by being kept in captivity. Which means one other thing: even if you put up electric fences with Joan Rivers’s face posted on them as a deterrent, these creatures will try to get out. They’re wild. And it’s been happening. In recent memory:
--- A python surfacing in a Shaker Heights toilet. Talk about a sure cure for constipation.To my knowledge, no Noah’s ark grounded in the Buckeye State, and none of these creatures was liberated by animal rights crusaders. They all escaped from private owners. Was OSU’s game that boring this year, that someone needed a python to curl up next to them on third-and-two? And it seems unlikely, even with people eating at home more since 9/11, that culinary considerations were involved. I haven’t noticed a market for javalena burgers here. Yet.
--- A black mamba—the world’s deadliest snake—at large in Akron. Try getting vaccine for that at Kaiser.
--- A full-grown lion killed by authorities while roaming free in southern Ohio. And you thought skunks in the trash were a problem.
You expect to read about a boa constrictor gobbling someone’s chihuahua in Hollywood, or a gator drowning a 71 year-old man in Florida, because you expect fruitcakes with more money than sense to own snakes as big around as ATV tires and build condos in alligator alley. But in the corn-fed midwest, the beer gut of American common sense?
Unless you have a death wish, there’s no point in owning a creature that sees you as dinner. Personally, I have no illusions about nature: if it’s moving toward me I’m in reverse. Karma does not apply to wild animals. So what if you cried as a kid when Bambi’s mother died? Accidentally spook a grizzly while photographing the great outdoors, no previous eco-mindedness or promise of prints to the Sierra Club will buy time for a getaway. You will receive prints--on your sternum. So why put your life at risk? Buy a budgie and dye your hair blue instead.
I mean, there are such things as zoos, funded with your tax dollars, where you can observe all manner of teeth and talons up close without worrying about beating a cheetah back to your car if it doesn’t like your cologne. Not to mention slaughtering a steer for its keep.
Is it being consumed by possessions (at the risk of them consuming you) that impels us to buy dangerous animals? Or simply the illusion of mastery over nature? We forget that animals learned the ropes of survival before we did. They don’t think it’s bad manners to bite your nose off instead of rub it; they’re just doing what comes naturally. Frankly, if it were my nature to run down live prey, and I saw gramps next door taking his time to the mailbox, I wouldn’t let a little chain link bother me.
As for impressing the neighborhood, there are less potentially litigious ways of doing it than raising Komodo dragons. Though, admittedly, few discourage block parties as well.