Thirteen Pets, Part 1

When old friends call, they ask about the pets. All through med school and residency, my wife and I were notorious for our critters. Never anything too exotic, mind you — I never did get that spider monkey I wanted so much as a kid (blame Curious George) — but exotic enough that our friends never forget the menagerie.

One of the neat things about a Thirteen is that it lets you see your life through a variety of lenses. I’ve done Thirteens on food, sex, crushes, dreams, patients, you name it. I’m flabbergasted that I’ve never done one on pets. Really. ‘Cuz I’m all about animals.

1. Cujo (some kind of tortoise) was my first pet. I bought him during my first year of med school and I kept him in a cardboard box. Poor Cujo, I really had no clue how to take care of his needs. I doubt I kept him warm enough, since his appetite was always poor. And I let him indulge in lettuce, which is tortoise junk food. I used to let him drink from a running hose, since he never showed any interest in drinking from a bowl. One day, I was studying anatomy on the front porch of our rental house, keeping one eye on the anatomy atlas and one eye on Cujo. I took my eye off Cujo for one minute and he was gone.

Amazing how fast they can move when you’re not looking.

2. Baby, a Columbian red-tailed boa constrictor, was our first purchase as a married couple. We bought her at East Bay Vivarium and she really was a baby. Her real name was Boa Derek, but we soon dropped that dopey name and called her by what she was, our first baby. Here’s a picture of me, Karen, Baby, and Red Sonja, our next purchase — probably my favorite picture of Karen from those days. And here’s a closeup of Baby. Yet another pet who resembles Frank Zappa:

Not long afterwards, we purchased a mate for Baby: DT (short for Deep Throat), who once bit me right on the lips. I was lying on the bed with him, a boy and his snake, flicking my tongue at him whenever he flicked his tongue at me. Not a bright move. Baby and DT mated, Baby got pregnant, delivered stillborn young, and went nuts. Stark raving mad nuts. It saddened us to see our good-natured boa turn into a vicious bitch, but we kept her as long as we could. I think she was 16 when she died.

3. Ike, a Knight Anole, was an impulse buy. These dudes look soooo bad: piss ’em off (e.g., by looking at them) and they turn jet black, open their mouths, and hiss. They back up this impressive display with a powerful bite.

The pet store kindly took him back in trade.

4. Brownie, our beloved brown rat:

Folks who have never owned pet rats may not be able to understand the appeal. They are remarkably intelligent and good-natured, and affectionate, too. Whenever we let Brownie out of her cage, she would hop onto one of our laps and stay there as long as we would pet her.

Rats don’t live long, unfortunately, and Brownie soon succumbed to breast cancer. Karen’s health wasn’t great at the time, either, and while Brownie’s death upset us both, Karen was especially hard hit.

5. Rodan and Gamera, two Red-Belly Newts who weren’t particularly intelligent or affectionate, but who provided us plenty of entertainment with their goofy swimming and climbing and eating. They’re fun to watch, newts, and if it weren’t for the annoying food source (tubifex worms) I would probably still own a couple of newts.

Another stupid move on my part: I wanted to tweak the aquarium temperature, up just a degree or two, but then I got distracted. Came back a few hours later.

“Um, Karen, why is steam rising from the surface of the aquarium . . . ?”

6. Renfield, our first frog:

Not much to say about Renfield. Ate lots of crickets. Laid enormous poops. Eventually croaked.

7. Elissa, a Brazilian Rainbow Boa, easily takes the prize as our meanest-ever pet. Even the insane Baby was not as evil as Elissa; Karen and I still have the scars to back up that statement.

Like any Brazilian Rainbow Boa, however, she was a knockout. Check out the link — that rainbow effect is NOT faked. We tried to capture that with our camera, but we never succeeded.

8. Tubby, an Argentian Horned Frog, AKA “Pac Man Frog.” Here he (she?) is as a toddler:

Tubby had a thing for toes. You don’t flick your tongue at a snake and you don’t wiggle your toes in front of a Horned Frog. At least snakes have the decency to let go when they realize you’re not food; Horned Frogs hold on for dear life. And oh. my. god. are they ever strong.

Pop quiz: do frogs have teeth?

9. Pee Wee, our ill-fated iguana.

A moment ago, I searched the blog. No, I’ve never told the Pee Wee story. Amazing!

Pee Wee loved to climb the drapes. There’s something irresistible about being the highest creature in the apartment, apparently. This doesn’t make sense to me, since if you gravitate toward the tree tops, won’t the eagles pick you off? Alternatively, you could suffer Pee Wee’s fate.

One day, he fell. You would think an animal coordinated enough to climb up and down the drapes day after day would be coordinated enough to NOT FALL ONCE HE’S UP THERE, but the doofus proved us wrong. He fell, broke his back, but didn’t die.

We took him to the vet, who gave him a shot of steroids but told us it was hopeless. The X-ray showed a broken spine. Karen took the X-ray to her rheumatologist, who found it so enchanting that he had to share it with his buddy the neurosurgeon, who decided he could do microsurgery in his lab and fix Pee-Wee’s broken spine!

Woot! Way we figured it, he was a goner if the neurosurgeon didn’t operate; at least this way, Pee Wee would have a chance at a normal life, and we would have one hell of a story. But then the neurosurgeon got cold feet. He was afraid we’d be pissed at him if there was a bad outcome; someone must have told him that he’d be practicing veterinary medicine without a license. I don’t know what came over him. Anyway, he insisted on bringing a vet into the whole thing, ostensibly to provide anesthesia, and the vet wanted to get paid.

I was in residency at the time earning something around minimum wage. ($25,000/yr working 80 to 100 hours per week during internship; I never bothered to figure out whether it was above or below the minimum.) We couldn’t afford the vet.

Pee Wee was able to eat and drink, but couldn’t move his back legs. He died not long after, presumably from intestinal blockage.

10. Hamachi, our Chameleo quadricornis, a real character.

Of all of our chameleons, Hamachi had the most personality. As I’ve written (long ago), Hamachi would cross the whole apartment to do battle with our Chameleo pardalis, Thor. Chameleons are usually cool with turf rivals as long as they can’t SEE each other. But not Hamachi. He couldn’t tolerate sharing the apartment with any other chameleon.

Chameleons make great pets, but they are truly a hassle. They’ll only drink running water, so you need to set up a drip watering system. They need to be fed at least twice daily — live food only. And they need proper lighting and a good temperature gradient. But if you give them all of that, they are a joy to behold. I miss them.

Here’s a Veiled Chameleon (Chameleo calyptratus) snagging crickets. The cricket-snagging starts at 00:51, if you’re impatient. Here’s another good one, and another.

11. Bart, a Chacoan Horned Frog, had much the same design flaw as Tubby: he was unsafe around naked toes.

Bart was enormous. He ate mice, for heaven’s sake.

12. Julia, our Eastern Indigo snake, was easily our most expensive snake. Maybe even our most expensive pet, period, although some of Karen’s tarantulas were pretty pricey.
Indigos love food. First time we ever saw an Indigo, he was being fed live mice, and it was a real treat to see him tear around his cage in pursuit of his prey. “In pursuit of his prey” is NOT a phrase ordinarily associated with snakes, but Indigos aren’t your ordinary snake. And when they catch their prey, they chew it to death. It’s a real blood sport.

With such joie de vivre, such pleasure in cuisine, is it any wonder we named our Indigo after Julia Child?

13. Heather, our first scorpion (an Emperor Scorpion):

Named for one of my chiefs during internship. We used to say, “Calling her Heather is an insult to scorpions.”

In retrospect, Heather wasn’t so bad (the human Heather, that is). I’ve met lots worse docs since then.

You know what to do: leave a comment and I’ll give you your lurve, you lurve monkey you!

first, since I forgot to give them some lurve last week . . .

Michelle rediscovers swaddling

and

Darla’s Thirteen Darlas

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microsoar has cool pix from the 2008 Birdman Rally

my question to protected static: when will I be famous enough that people will want to kill me, too?

Pat: the things a guy has to do for silver.

I have Shaina’s bar code . . . now I can pass myself off as her! (And why, pray tell, do I get a guinea pig when I click on the young women, hmm?)

Kate, you forgot Scampi and Buttsechs Day 🙁

Tam’s got curb appeal (or will soon, we hope)

thursday thirteen

D.