Well, I did think that getting a Merit (or passing at all) would mean I’d have to pay it back in some why to keep the cosmic balance. There is no way the amount of work I did equated a Merit. Natural common sense plus the work I did could get a Pass, but Merit? Something off there. So it’s payback time. Or rather it was yesterday – hopefully I’ve paid now.
So, Friday evening. I was going home for the night but I had decided to leave Basil the rat here. When I’d got Basil out earlier the stress of being rathandled had caused him to exceed what his lungs are capable of now and he had started breathing very hard. So I was leaving him here rather than stress him with travel for the sake of one night. On hearing this, various people tried (and failed) to talk me into putting him down. Now, aside from my personal opinion of rodent euthanasia, increased respiratory effort in stressed circumstances is NOT a reason to put any animal down. More importantly, why should someone who’s had 2 rats, who goes to rat shows and knows breeders and rescuers of the beasties take any advice from anyone with less experience? A hamster is not a rat. Rats are very different to other typical rodent pets.
Poor bunny on the journey home had to put up with 45 mins of me talking about my in depth views on euthanasia, pet ownership and captial punishment. She’s a good listener.
So the combined effects of that situation was the first installment on my payment. The next day (Saturday) I wanted to chill out but instead was recruited into moving a 20 gallon fish tank. Which means empting said tank, catching the fish, cleaning the stones and then putting it all back together in it’s new home. So that took 4 hours. I didn’t have a net, so I went shopping for one. As I pulled into the car park of the pet centre I backed up as I changed my mind about a spot and backed into a nice new shiny car that was just coming into the car park. Kitty (my little car) was unhurt, they were rather dinked. Insurance comes up for renewal in about 10 days to boot. Plus the bloody centre didn’t have a net. That was installment two. Installement three was possibly how Confidence the pleco catfish held onto the net (went to another shop later with dad driving) when I was moving him so I had to cut the brand new net.:plain:
Bunny had her night terrors last night (installment four). Second time now. She sits in her cage and is point blank convinced there is something god awful and terrifying in the room. So she starts to thump. Being woken up at 4am by an animal that is telling you there is something in the room is not a nice experience and scares the wits out of me. I tried letting her run around, I gave her some rescue remedy, petted her to calm her down and gave her a yoggie which she ignored, but eventually I worked out what would stop her thumping and let me get to sleep – a large blanket over the cage! Sensory deprivation – works like a charm. Used to shut birds up, get horses out of burning barns and apparently a rather effective torture method too.
Hopefully that’s it now. Oh, and I burned myself on an incense stick last night. Installment five.