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The Death of a Pet

The Source

I’ve never owned a pet. I grew up on a farm where animals were made for making more animals when they reached the end of their lifespan we ate them. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but that’s what you do with hogs and beef cattle. Then when I moved away from my parents’ home I had no desire to have a dog or cat or fish around the house. I certainly didn’t want to feed them for a season then eat them. Okay, someone once gave me a very long wiener dog named Charlie who I kept in my house for a single day, but when a lady from our church came to visit that evening and Charlie started doing questionable things on her right leg I gave Charlie away. Charlie was a pervert. I’m Presbyterian. He had to go. I have nothing against indoor pets or the people who house them, but I’m simply not home enough to take care of a beagle or blue tick even if I wanted their company. I enjoy other people’s dogs and much of my enjoyment comes from the fact that I can pet them, play with them, then go home and leave the owner to take care of the feeding, grooming, and veterinary bills. Like a doting uncle who can go goo-goo with the baby but doesn’t have to change his diapers. All of which makes it strange that this winter I adopted a pet. Actually, the pet adopted me. Most owners know the breed of their hound or feline, but frankly I did not. I used to call them ladybugs but I may be wrong. They’re those little tank-shaped things that infest your house in the summertime. Somehow one had survived the fall and winter and taken up residence in my living room. Each night when I turned on the ceiling light she’d awaken and buzz around it until I went to bed. To my knowledge Lois never went into another room. Yes, I called her Lois. If she was going to spend the winter then she needed a name. Even though I dislike insects as much as the next guy I’ve never minded ladybugs. I think it’s because they reminded me of my grandma’s house. Grandma Orr had a large bay window in the south of her living room and the little beetles would have a veritable circus on her windowsills when the sun came out. I spent many fun-filled hours nosing the little rascals around on Grandma’s carpet, flipping them over on their backs, and setting up mock battles between one beetle battalion and another. So Lois spent this winter doing crazy circles around my living room light bulbs. Don’t get me wrong. . . I’m not a kook. I didn’t talk to her or anything like that. One of my theatre students sat on my couch one chilly afternoon, saw Lois doing her blitzkrieg on the bulb and said, “You want me to kill that thing?” I told him that I wasn’t so old that I couldn’t swat my own bugs and besides, Lois was my pet. He thought I was kidding. I Googled to find out what ladybugs ate and discovered that the moment its larvae emerge they begin consuming aphids or mites. A ladybug will consume approximately 5000 aphids in its bug-life. I found this remarkable and since I’d seen neither an aphid nor a mite in my house I assumed that Lois was doing one fine job. She was one beneficial bug to have around. Okay, there were moments when she irritated me. Occasionally she’d have a fit of ting-ting-tinging the light bulb and that was a bit annoying. Once she crashed into the light fixture and ended up on my coffee table, dazed. I think that perhaps Lois had consumed too many aphids that day. And once I awoke from a nap and found her crawling up my pant leg. By the time February rolled around our relationship was getting strained. The worst problems came on those cold days when I walked into my living room, turned on the light and saw that she wasn’t pinging the light. It made me wonder where she was. More than once I checked the covers before I got into bed. I started inspected the sugar in the bowl before I scooped. I was afraid that perhaps she’d eaten every aphid in my house and had resorted to people food, discarded socks, or underwear. Either Lois had died, gone to Florida, or was simply in hiding. It’s shameful to admit that you’ve been made paranoid by a mere bug, but on the nights when Lois was gone I was a bit on edge. Then she returned one night, slapping her little body against the light fixture. I grabbed a magazine, slapped her to the floor then stepped on her. Life’s too short to have it messed up by a bug.