Pets

Day 198

In organizing/scanning the dozens and dozens of pictures that my family has taken and collected over the years I’ve only been able to find a few that were of the pets we used to have. Most people have had a dog or a cat (or both) as a pet, but my family was different in that respect. A combination of allergies and fears prevented us from having a dog or a cat, but we were able to have a family pet.

The first pet my family had was a beautiful blue parakeet that we named Barney. We got him when we lived in Orem, Utah and it was a cool experience. I remember that me and my siblings were very excited to have a pet in the house. Barney’s cage was suspended from the ceiling, between the kitchen and the living room, and I remember often going over to the cage to watch Barney every now and then. And keeping a pet bird was virtually problem-free.

Having a pet helps teach valuable lessons to a child, such as being responsible and dedicated, learning to love and appreciate something, and perhaps the most difficult lesson: facing mortality. Barney became very sick one year, and on Christmas day he died. Talk about a day full of mixed emotions: happiness at the joys of Christmas, sadness at the loss of a family member.

Years later a new pet joined the Case family: a pot-bellied pig! My mom had long had a love for pigs and wanted to own one. A pot-bellied pig seemed to be the ideal pet, as they are not supposed to get very big and could be managed ; alas, “not supposed to” and “could be” were more like “definitely will” and “absolutely can’t”; and thus our family learned some more valuable lessons.

We got our pet pig in 1994, when we lived in Greeley, Colorado and we named him Kevin Arnold Bacon. Here’s the explanation of the name: you’ve got 'Kevin Arnold', the main character from the TV show The Wonder Years; then there’s 'Arnold the pig', from the TV show Green Acres; and lastly there is the actor Kevin Bacon. And there you have it!

Anyway, Kevin was quite the pet. Mom just loved him, loved having a pet pig in general. And it was fun…in the beginning. I remember that Kevin loved grapes, so we would often get a handful and either toss them to him or try and let him eat right from our hand. Perhaps we shouldn’t have fed him quite so many grapes, though, because in a matter of a few months Kevin’s weight shot up faster than [fill in the name of the celebrity of your choice who has suffered from weight issues] and he became too big to keep in our backyard. So, we gave him away to a woman with a farm. I hope that Kevin had a good life there!

Here in the Springs we’ve had a couple of parakeets. Originally, my parents were just “pet sitting” for some friends, keeping two parakeets named Buddy and Psycho. But eventually the owners offered to let us have the birds, and so we kept them. Once again, this was much easier than keeping a pet pig. And once again we had to deal with mortality when Buddy died.

Not wanting Psycho to be all alone my family got a new friend for him, another parakeet named Vertigo. Get it? Psycho? Vertigo? Alfred Hitchcock movies? Anywho, these birds were with us for a few years, and then it just got to be a hassle to keep their cage clean (not to mention the floor around the cage, which was forever in need of being vacuumed), so the birds were given away.



Currently, my sister Jaimee and her family own a beautiful dog named Allie; my brother Josh and his family own two terrific birds, Tiger and Snowflake; so the concept of having pets has passed on to the next generation. As for myself, unfortunately, I’m just not that big of a fan when it comes to pets in general. But I did enjoy the experiences I had growing up with these pets.