Friday, August 08, 2003

Sarah's thoughts have been so boring lately that she has not bothered to share... Plus, I have been busy with Spinsters With Cats activities. Right now, April and I are trying to make our site show up in search engines like Google and Yahoo. I submitted the site to Google a couple of hours ago but so far nothing has happened. April is too busy playing the world's most mind bogglingly boring video game (called Stickit) to help with the effort this evening.
Sarah's thoughts have been so boring lately that she has not bothered to share... Plus, I have been busy with Spinsters With Cats activities. Right now, April and I are trying to make our site show up in search engines like Google and Yahoo. I submitted the site to Google a couple of hours ago but so far nothing has happened. April is too busy playing the world's most mind bogglingly boring video game (called Stickit) to help with the effort this evening.

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

As I said in my last post, the chicken might come home to roost if you harm rodents (or are just a plain idiot..)... http://www.igorilla.com/gorilla/animal/2002/python_strangles_owner2.html

Monday, August 04, 2003

I have been doing some summer/fall cleaning the last few weekends... Today I came across a diary that escaped the mass diary destruction of my mid twenties. I actually do not remember when I chunked the diaries in the dumpster... This one might have been written after that. Actually, I am pretty sure that it was... I threw my diaries away because I could not stand the thought that someone would read them after my death and discover what I disturbed individual I was. Erm, luckily, I am better now. Anyway, this excerpt will show why the diaries had to be destroyed...

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10/31/1997

I think that it is too late to give an accurate account of the lives of Pinky, Slinky, and Arthur. Much shall be a romanticization since I began this effort so belatedly. I want to write a narrative of their little lives before they are gone and I can't remember their names, like the hamsters of my youth. Or, more likely, I will name all my subsequent rats Pinky and I will get the all confused. (NOTE TO READERS FROM 2003 - The prophecy came true! Over the years I kept renaming my rats the same names...) I want to remember them all as they were when I read this later.

I think that I first hit upon the idea of getting rats when I was at a doctor's or dentist's office. One of the magazines was called "Furry Animals" or "Critters" or something. The magazine article described various pet rodents and said that rats made the best pets because they were both smart and affectionate. I really don't believe I ever had a thought about getting a pet rat before that moment. I do not remember how much time elapsed before I acted.

I am going to leave the scribbling table for a moment to do some historical resarch. I am going to go over and look in my filing cabinet to see if I can find the receipt for Pinky's purchase. "Purchase." Hee hee. What a word to describe getting a pet.

As often happens in life, a great moment escaped documentation. I guess one never knows how much a pet is going to mean to one. I guess it is like buying what later becomes your favorite shirt. Rarely does one recognize it when one sees it.

Anyway, my mind conceived of purchasing a rat in the latter half of June, 1996. I really only remember the date because Pinky escaped (or was captured, I can't remember which) on July 4th, 1996. (NOTE TO READERS: Truly a weird story that I did not see fit to elaborate on at the time... I lost Pinky outside and several days later I saw her outside and recaptured her! What were the odds!?!)

I remember that Aaron Frank was going to accompany me to pick out my rat. However, a friend of his came by his apartment and stayed so long that the pet store closed. So, I went the next day alone. I had called several pet stores to locate some baby rats. I think that I had to call several places.

Avondale Mall in midtown had a pet store that had some "young rats." I asked about baby rats, but they seemed to be confused by the concept. I went into the pet store and didn't see any rats around. They had them in the back in this icky closet like room.

They had three sizes of rats - small, medium and large. I suppose that these characterizations had something to do with their value as food for snakes with sicko owners. We wonder why people are so cruel to each other when this sort of barbarism is considered socially acceptable. Ask not why you are the victim of random violence, snake owner... Enough social commentary. Anyway, I was disgusted with the place and their treatment of the rats. Just right now I remember the disgust I felt toward the sales girl. She was ugly and fat and had dyed hair. I remember wondering if she even liked animals....

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It continues in this vein for a long long time... Apparently, I must have exhausted myself because the next entry is six months later!
Things have gone downhill. I am now having auditory hallucinations. This morning I was awakened by the phone (something I hate on Sunday mornings in any event...) so I pressed the pillow down on my head to drown out the phone. Then, I heard someone say "Sarah" pretty close to where I was, in my bed. Since I didn't expect anyone to be in my apartment, I sort of woke up and looked around. I even got up and checked the answering machine, though I knew that it was not a voice from that because I can't hear it from my room anyway. There was no message at all so I looked outside of my open window and there was no one there. I hope I don't receive some sort of message tomorrow in which the next word is "kill..."

I would have thought it was my friend Dan because he has a key to my apartment and often comes in and wakes me up by saying "Sarah" but it wasn't his voice and he doesn't normally run away when I get up anyway. And, he came over a few hours later and said "Sarah" as he normally does and he denied that he came over earlier. It definitely was the voice of an unknown person, anyway. A male voice, I believe.

I wish I had some Doritos now...