Lauren Nichole Hendry
9-23-01
Menagerie
A menagerie, by dictionary terms, is a collection of wild animals put on exhibition. I think that I can say that my family has one without too much exaggeration.
In our house there lives 13 animals, not including the humans. I won’t bore you with lists, but I’ll introduce them as I go along.
The smallest of these animals are our two hamsters. One of our friend’s hamsters had babies, but they were promised to other people. My mom allowed us to get some from the pet store, instead. My sister’s hamster, named Sam, is a cute, brown, dwarf hamster. He’s so tiny he’d fit in a spoon! My hamster I named Featherfoot, because of the fluffy fuzz surrounding each foot. He’s a Siberian hamster, and all black and white splotched, like a cow. While Sam is nervous and cautious, Featherfoot is completely oblivious to everything. The only time I’ve ever really seen him react to something is when we cut his nails or give him a bath! He doesn’t even flinch if he falls off something.
Close in size to the hamsters are the mice we have. However, they aren’t really counted as pets because they don’t stay long. Our rosy boa, Robert, eats them. Robert is only about a foot and a half long, and he’s fully grown. He consumes two small, white mice a week. However, we’ve had a problem this past week. He’s refused to eat a mouse when, usually, he’d be hungry. Maybe it’s because he’s shedding (he’s always really cranky when he sheds). We’ve put him in his feeding box with the mouse several times, and Robert hasn’t eaten him. The poor mouse must have had 4 heart attacks already, being in with a snake so many times! Now he’s grown too big for Robert to eat, so my mom has to trade him in at the pet store for a smaller one.
Some of the more exotic pets we have are the sugar gliders. For those of you who don’t know what sugar gliders are, they’re like little, soft flying squirrels. The flaps of skin between their arms and legs allow them to glide, but they’re too lazy to do it often. They have long, fluffy tails, and when they’re mad, they make a noise like a rusty pencil sharpener! I’m serious. Their sudden outbursts of noise, which are surprisingly loud, have frightened many a curious guest. They both belong to my sister, and their names are Mariel and Burrito. Mariel is smaller and better tempered than Burrito, who growls at every opportunity.
My favorite of the flock is Ecko, my rat. She’s tan, with a white spot on her belly. She loves food and sleep, though she likes me well enough if I have a treat! She abhors exercise, so she’s rather fat. Her favorite foods include mashed potatoes, corn, and ice cream, but she’ll eat most anything that I do. Her favorite way of travel is on my shoulder, so she can see everything, and hide if she has to! I accidentally leave her cage (it’s a really big, old birdcage, but it works!) open all the time. Of course she gets out and hides in my room somewhere. Her favorite place is under my bed, though she’s popped up in several other places. Usually I can call her and she’ll come, but only because she expects a treat! I got her for my last birthday. My dad had a rat for a little while when he was young, but it got out and drowned in the toilet.
Our iguana is one of our less exciting creatures. He’s still young and small, though he doesn’t like people very much. When he gets scared, he whips you with his tail (since it’s all bone and muscle, it hurts a lot!). He eats salad greens, though he doesn’t appreciate fruit very much. His absolute favorite thing is his heat lamp. He sleeps under that all day.
We’ve had several hedgehogs before, but they’ve all managed to run away. Now we have Tilly. She sleeps a lot and eats kitten food and mealworms. Tilly loves her piece of bathroom rug, which she sleeps under. When she’s scared or angry she sounds like a car gunning it’s motor. She also sheds her prickles, like hair, and they’re very sharp. I remember many a time when my toes have found hedgehog prickles in the carpet! A few days ago Tilly got out of her cage and hid somewhere. It’s happened before, so we didn’t get too worried until she’d been gone almost three days. Of course we looked for her, but had no luck finding her. Yesterday, however, I was looking in the guest room’s closet, and I heard her familiar car sound. It took me a minute to discover her hiding place (behind a trunk). I stuck myself several times on her prickles picking her up (she curls up when she’s scared).
Our groundhogs are definitely entertainment itself. At first we only had Timmon. She loves to have her cheeks rubbed, and is constantly sticking her nose out of the cage to get our attention. We nicknamed her Sqeaken, because she always throws back her head and squeals when we pet her. She’s rubbed all the fur off her nose because she always rubs it against the bars of her cage. We got Timothy, our second groundhog, as company for Timmon. He’s cute, but he sleeps a lot. My dad sometimes doesn’t know about animals until after we get them. This was the case with Timothy. Probably the night that we got him, I brought up the subject in front of dad, and mom glared at me. I guess she’ll break the news to dad from now on…
Bob is the most energetic of our household (not just referring to the pets!). Bob is a miniature daschund, and he’s only about a foot long! We’ve had big dogs before, but Bob (his full name is Bob Chocolate) is tiny. When my mom takes him to stores, he rides in her purse, his little head sticking out! The funniest thing Bob does is hide his treats. When we give him a bone or a chewy, he carries it off. We find his treats “buried” all over the house- behind trash cans, in corners, under chairs. Sometimes he buries it, finds it again, reburies it in a different location, finds it, ect. Over and over. Tedious, I think, but he seems to find it amusing! He also loves to sit in my mom’s lap as she drives, staring out the window. He’s a great lap dog when he’s not hyper!
The last animals, I promise! We have two cats. Actually, the cats were the first to arrive at our house. My parents said that the cats were to be the only pets, but you see how that works out! My brother’s cat is an orange-striped and white marmalade, named Pikachu. Mine is Leprechaun, or Chaunie- a dark tortoiseshell. We got them both from Petsmart. We used to turn the faucets on for them to drink, but that became a problem. For one thing, we’d forget to turn the faucets off, which wasted a lot of water. Plus, after their “queenly” treatment, they refused to drink out of their water bowls. They’d rather drink the leftover shower water in the bottom of the tub, or from the toilet, than from their bowl, no matter how fresh it was. My mom finally solved the problem by getting them a special water bowl that’s kind of like a fountain. They like it, but still expect us to turn on the sink faucets for them. They’re also funny because they’re both cowards. They run from the dog, which is half their size, and the groundhogs, which are a fourth of their size! They seem to enjoy teasing the dog, however, when he’s in his kennel or when they’re up on a table, where he can’t get them!
We definitely have a menagerie in our house, though I think that the word menagerie has a different meaning for me now. It’s more than a collection of animals- it’s the things that we learn from them. Such as- how to take care of different kinds of animals, learning how different species can adapt (or not adapt) to having strange creatures living next to them (that wouldn’t be there in the wild), and the fun it can be to be taking care of such a diversity of animals.
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