Life Lesson #36: Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. - George Eliot

I was caught sobbing in Lord and Taylor’s jewelry department on Saturday. Good thing there is a cosmetics counter a bracelet-toss away. I quickly stole a tissue box from a heavily made-up gentleman giving some old lady a frightening ‘make-over’ and made a mad dash from the penetrating, unsympathetic eyes of fellow shoppers and booked it onto the anonymous city streets.

“Excuse me, miss. May I ask where you get your hair done?” some guy blurted out while managing to successfully block me from sidestepping him.

“I’m sorry, not right now,” I mumbled, desperately trying to swerve to his right.

“This will only take a moment! I’m a representative of –“ Mr. Observant continued, trying to shove a clipboard with some local salon’s price list under my nose.

“No thank you,” I said louder, attempting my escape route to the left.

“Well, if you just give me a moment –“

“Seriously, dude, LOOK AT ME. Does it look like I want to stand here and chat about my hair? My dog just died, you dick,” I blurted out.

Woops.

With sadness I tell you all that my fat, smelly, slightly idiotic, four-legged bundle of fur moved on to doggy heaven this weekend. I hope he gets countless hours of naptime, endless amounts of doggy booty, and, for the sake of all the other pooches waiting around patiently for their owners to show up, an odorless scent of gas streaming out of his butt.

Obviously, I’m heartbroken. I managed to convince myself that he was healthy and fine. As long as my mom kept making him his special diet meals and we kept him from getting too excited or overheated, then he’d last forever, right? I know. Delusional. But that’s how I am, especially with dogs.

Come to think of it, I’m kind of that way with most pets I’ve had.

The first time we went to Long Beach Island when I was in second grade, I begged my parents to let my vacation souvenir be a hermit crab. They finally caved; probably thinking it’ll teach me a thing or two about responsibility and, more importantly, keep me quiet during the three hour car ride home.

I named my hermit crab Michelangelo, after my favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle who was oh-so-witty and could take anyone on with his nunchakus. He had a pretty sick terrarium, equipped with a faux log and some pink gravel. I fed him everyday and made sure to let him run around on my bedroom floor while I did my homework. I even wrote a fully illustrated book about him for a class project, titled Michelangelo: The Hermit Crab.

In his biography, he meets a lady crab who wears a pillbox hat and white gloves, they get married three days after their first date, honeymoon in New York City, where they meet a lady who looks strangely like a hooker, and eventually move back to the ocean where they have a bunch of baby hermit crabs.

In reality, Michelangelo acquired roommates over the years, sometimes up to three at a time, changed shells, and even got a bigger, blue terrarium that had a jungle scene background (which probably confused the crap out of the poor little guy).

One horrible night, I came back from dance class to find his lifeless, shriveled up legs hanging out of his crab shell. My initial, hopeful thought was that it was not actually him, but rather the skin they leave behind when they outgrow their shells and need to move into larger ones. But a quick inspection of what should have been his new, protective covering revealed a still-hollow shell. Clearly, Michelangelo had peaced-out.

Actually, I have to be honest with you. The lifeless body that was ceremoniously put into the creek in my backyard was most likely not my beloved Michelangelo. You see, I had gotten so many of this silly little pet over the years that changed from shell to shell, who the hell knows which one was which by the end of their lives? I just naively assumed that my first was also my last, and thus the final of the hermit crabs received the most proper of burials.

After I had properly mourned the loss of Michelangelo, which included a tear-filled poem recited as his body was taken away to the sewer across the street, I was ready for a new pet.

Enter Whitey.

I had gone to the pet store with my dad to get some treats for Lea, our crazy Chow Chow. I walked out with an albino frog with freakish red eyes and almost transparent webs. I guess I was just too young to realize how un-P.C. the name Whitey was. I thought it was highly comical and clever on my part. My parents gave up on convincing me it was inappropriate when I threatened to leave him in their bed at night.

Whitey was magical. He would float around all day eating fish food flakes and giving me high-fives through the aquarium wall. I could have sworn that when I held him, he shook with delight. And nothing made my brothers and I laugh more than when a bluish-brown stream of poop would get stuck coming out of his pin-size butt hole.

Eventually, I killed Whitey.

You see, he was strictly a vegetarian. The only things he should (and really, could) eat were fish food and lettuce. But one day, I gave him a cricket. We had them all over the house during the spring, and I thought, how cool would it be to watch him eat a live bug?

Well, I’ll tell you, it was really cool. I mean, he attacked that bug like Paris on a photo-op. Then, it got stuck in his throat for like an hour, as he kept gulping it and gulping it ‘til it was finally in his fleshy little belly. He immediately boycotted his flakes and leaves for the clearly more enticing crickets. And so, like a drug peddler, I continuously supplied Whitey with the poison that would kill his tiny little see-through body.

Whitey’s aquarium was actually Michelangelo’s old terrarium, just filled with water. Because he was only supposed to eat the most basic of foods, he didn’t need a filter system. Every four days, my brother would hold Whitey for me while I rinsed out the gravel and put in fresh water.

When the only thing coming out of Whitey’s anus was the waste of vegetables, this was not an issue. Once live animals started working their way through his digestive track, things started turning sour. His body couldn’t properly digest this foreign food, nor could I clean his home fast enough.

In the end, we think his own toxic poop did him in. I woke up one morning to find him floating wrong-side-up on the surface of putrid, colored water. I was crushed. While I was stupid enough to feed him crickets, I was not so stupid that I couldn’t figure out that my own desire to recreate a scene from Animal Planet in my bedroom is ultimately what killed the poor bastard.

Whitey received his royal treatment via the standard backyard burial. His stiff little legs got bent up into a white box that I buried under a tree, right by the edge of the creek where his former tenant had left me not too long before.

You can bet your ass I was crying then, just like Saturday afternoon, as I stumbled to make a silly little cross out of twigs and those twisty-ties they stick on the end of a loaf of bread.

Life Lesson # 36: I may not get as emotional at weddings as you'd like, or lose my composure during Extreme Home Makeover, but the death of a pet makes me awfully sad. Brutus was ridiculous and smelly and way too fat for his own good, but I loved him just the same. And while it’s terribly sad to lose him, or any pet for that matter, I wouldn’t ever want to miss out on all the memories my random mishmash of silly animals has brought me. So this week, I thank all my pets for making me more creative, letting me learn how to care for someone beyond myself, and for keeping my feet warm when it’s cold outside.