Not all pets are dogs….. When I was around seven my parents got a parakeet – no idea why, but the bird cage was placed on a stand that had wheels. My little sister, who was just a year old and in the crawling stage, would crawl up to the stand, grab a hold of one of the legs and shake it like crazy. I don’t know if she was entertained by the squawking or the feathers flying, or what – but we were frequently rescuing the bird from Hurricane Jo Ellen. One night my parents decided to let the parakeet out to fly around. The bird took off out of the cage, flew directly to my little sister, who was sitting on the floor, and would repeatedly dive bomb her. She finally landed on Jo’s head and proceeded to grab a beak full of hair and pull like crazy. Fortunately, my dad was able to get the bird before it drew blood.

Of all these pets that we had I think the fish my brother caught was the most bizarre. Like most kids we went through our share of guppies and goldfish. Who knows how many goldfish we brought home from the county fair summer after summer. My brother had a tank of several dozen guppies that he had cared for for quite a long time (as guppy life expectancy goes). One summer we were camping at the lake and my brother caught a small fish that seemed about the same size as his guppies and looked quite interesting. He convinced my parents to let him keep it and put it in his tank at home. The little fry spent the rest of the week in a Styrofoam cup while we camped, and actually survived the car ride home as my brother held it on his lap for the whole trip home. He very carefully and with a certain feeling of accomplishment put the new fish into the tank of guppies. It was a few weeks later that we discovered the guppy tank was looking a little less full – every few days it seemed the guppy population was being depleted, until the fateful day that Patrick looked at the tank and there was nothing left but his little carnivore that we finally identified as a “muskie”, a fierce and highly predatory game fish native to northern waters that has been known to attack anything it can chomp on, including human hands and feet.

Lessons learned: don’t rattle the cage unless you’re prepared for the fall out and consequences; a little fish in a big pond will probably get eaten, but a little fish in a crowded aquarium can do a lot of damage.