Now for a segment from animal kingdom! Or rather, just a silly story from the pet store. This one happened maybe a month ago, but I was just briefly reminded of it recently. I can't remeber if I had written about this one before, but if I have, here it is again for your reading pleasure.
For a while, we were having a problem with hamsters. They would continually get what we call "wet tail", which is essentially just a polite way of saying rodent-diarrhea. Wet tail can be brought about by many things, but it is usually just due to stress. The stress is what truly has several catalysts. One of which is indeed a genuine contagions diseases. These diseases are not usually fatal, but they do distress and upset the hamster which leads to wet tail. Wet tail, strangely enough, is fatal. The leading cause of hamster death is a pet store is them shitting themselves to death. Much more sad then it sounds.
There was a small hamster-cold going round our store which was playing out the exact scenario mentioned above. A hamster-cold, like a human cold, is very difficult to combat, so instead of attacking the virus, we attacked it's symptoms, just as people do with their own minor illnesses. In order to keep our hamster bowels in check, we hard to harden their stool, or rather, make their bodies absorb more moisture. The answer to this was sodium, aka salt. Now, we had to get the salt into the hamsters system, and they are not exactly inclined to drink salted water, so we had to get a little creative. What do you do if a baby won't suck it's pacifier? You put something sweet on it of course. But instead of honey, we used gatoraid. Yes, our rodents were drinking sports drink. Fruit Punch at that! It seemed to be their favorite. Gatoraid has a great deal of sodium in it, to help humans absorb the water in the drink and get hydrated faster. So this formula worked out perfectly. Both nutritious and delicious! The hamsters went nuts for it, and drank it down greedily. We continued to give the hamster gatoraid for several months. Since we were always get in crates of this fluffy fur balls, we figured one of the shipments would eventually once again contain a sick hamster, and spread it to the rest of them. The gatoraid was working to stop the wet tail, so why stop? Aside from the occasional customers asking "Why is the hamsters water red?", we mostly didn't have any problems with mixing up some thirst-quenching fruit punch every time we fed them. However, some employees in the store were a little lazy at times, and didn't want to go through the trouble of mixing new gatoraid at the end of every night. This is where the trouble started.
The hamsters were getting sick again, no one was sure why. It didn't happen as often as it did when we had the wet tail problem, but hamsters were dying on occasion. Since there was no apparent reason, we just ignored it for the most part, as the losses were not terribly regular.
The hamster water bottles can hold a lot of fluid. More then three critters crammed into a tiny tank will drink in a long period of time. When it came to feeding time, people would simply fill up a hamster water bottle full of gatoraid, and as long as the hamster still had some gatoraid left, they wouldn't bother too replace it. One day, I noticed that a bottle was almost out of it fruity red fluid and I took it out to add more. When I opened the bottle, I was hit with a wafting stench. It smelt like alcohol. The gatoraid was being left in the bottles so long that it was going bad. Not only this, but it seemed to be fermenting to a certain degree. We were poisoning the hamster, and possibly getting them right-smashed while we did so. It was a bad scene.
From then on, we decided to not give the hamsters sugary sports drink anymore. While regular cleaning and maintenance would have solved the problem, we didn't trust all the employees to routinely check to see which bottles had old gatoraid, and new gatoraid inside of them. So now, when hamsters gets sick, we simply quarantine it, and move one. The moral of the story is, don't drink really old gatoraid, it will fuck ya right up.
While that is the end of the hamster story, I think I will touch quickly on the life of a few other animals. For those of you who don't know, I keep an aquarium. Throughout my life I have almost always kept one. Just something me and my mother had fun with while I was growing up. My experience with keeping fish as pets is one of the things that got me the job at the pet store.
Currently in my fish tank, I am keeping a pet crayfish. A blue crayfish to be exact. I took pictures of it and posted it in my journal not long ago. I think many of you have already seen it. In that journal entry, along with the photo, I made a joke saying that when my miniature pet lobster grew big and strong I would devour his butter-smothered corpse. While the crayfish hasn't grown to a size where I can eat it for a meal, and never actually will, it has grown rather large. It's almost 6 inches from head to tail. The largest fish in my aquarium is only about two inches. It now spends it's days chasing around the fish in the tank and trying to grab them with it's claws. Fortunately for the fish, they are much faster then the coruscation, and can swim to the top of the tank where it cannot get them. Regardless of this fact, I am losing fish. Two in the past month. These fish are simply disappearing. Despite that I have seen no signs of struggle or violence, I can only assume that my crayfish is responsible. This monster sea-bug is not leaving any remains. I tried feeding it mosquito larva to appease it's insatiable hunger for fresh meat, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I almost feel the need to separate my blue-clawed little friend, but instead, I think I am just going to let him catch any fish he can, then replace his victims with more large and robust playmates. Hopefully is I match his size, he won't be so disposed to eat his neighbors. We will have to see. If nothing else, the crayfish is way fun to watch chase the fish around the tank.
Lately, I have been keeping my cat in the house. I have had this cat for 12 years now, and when I moved to Ottawa, I surrendered it to my parents. I didn't want to have to take it with me as I knew I would be moving around a lot. Often in places where I could not keep a cat. Most of my friends know this feline. It's name is pepper, and it may or may not be the anti-christ. I am voting for yes.
Pepper likes to attack people. He makes a sport out of it. He hides, the jumps out and bites people without being provoked. My dear sweet mother somehow doesn't mind this, and still keeps the cat. I sometimes think that she believes she can still train it to stop biting people, even though it has been doing this for 12 years of it's life. It's just not healthy. This creature draws blood!
My mother went away for a boat trip a few weeks ago, and asked me if she could bring the cat to Ottawa to live with me while she went away. Naturally, I couldn't refuse her. The cat has been okay for the most part. I had to warn my house mates of the cats blood-lust and instruct them not to pet the cat. This worked for a long time. The cat went about it's merry way not ignoring everyone as we ignored it. No one believed me that this cat had a cruel and savage heart hidden beneath it's slightly overweight frame. But just lately, it started again. The cat is leaping on peoples head from behind the touch and biting our skulls without warning. The house is a little on edge. We are living in fear of the cats next ambush. The people I live with are none too pleased with the beast.
Not only does Pepper have this strange and violent habit, but it also has a more grotesque hobby it like to conduct each day. It likes to hump stuffed animals. Two specific ones to be exact. The cat is indeed fixed, but regardless, it likes to get freaky with a plush god and lamb. At one point both this stuffed toys stood up, and made a somewhat visually pleasing offer to the cat. He has now raped these innocent childrens treasures so many times that they have been completely flattened from the cats regular weight upon them. The cats futile attempt at love making does however seem to calm it's rage for a short period of time, so we let it have it's way with his false-animal friends, and partially encourage him by placing them in a readily available spot. Naturally, my mother wouldn't let me take the cat without giving me his soft-spoken partners. My mother seems to think it amusing, or at least a means to an end when it comes to keeping the cat in check. She has named the toys "lamby" and "Winn Dixie" (winn dixie after the dog who apparently inspired a chain of convenience stores in the united states). The cat used to give it to a garfield doll, but that got all dirty and covered in cat hair, so we threw it out.
I guess I bring this cat thing to mind because as I write this journal entry the feline is mounted on it's sex-doll, thrusting away, and staring me intently in the eyes. This is most unsettling. I get the feeling I should have better things to do on a Saturday night.
For a while, we were having a problem with hamsters. They would continually get what we call "wet tail", which is essentially just a polite way of saying rodent-diarrhea. Wet tail can be brought about by many things, but it is usually just due to stress. The stress is what truly has several catalysts. One of which is indeed a genuine contagions diseases. These diseases are not usually fatal, but they do distress and upset the hamster which leads to wet tail. Wet tail, strangely enough, is fatal. The leading cause of hamster death is a pet store is them shitting themselves to death. Much more sad then it sounds.
There was a small hamster-cold going round our store which was playing out the exact scenario mentioned above. A hamster-cold, like a human cold, is very difficult to combat, so instead of attacking the virus, we attacked it's symptoms, just as people do with their own minor illnesses. In order to keep our hamster bowels in check, we hard to harden their stool, or rather, make their bodies absorb more moisture. The answer to this was sodium, aka salt. Now, we had to get the salt into the hamsters system, and they are not exactly inclined to drink salted water, so we had to get a little creative. What do you do if a baby won't suck it's pacifier? You put something sweet on it of course. But instead of honey, we used gatoraid. Yes, our rodents were drinking sports drink. Fruit Punch at that! It seemed to be their favorite. Gatoraid has a great deal of sodium in it, to help humans absorb the water in the drink and get hydrated faster. So this formula worked out perfectly. Both nutritious and delicious! The hamsters went nuts for it, and drank it down greedily. We continued to give the hamster gatoraid for several months. Since we were always get in crates of this fluffy fur balls, we figured one of the shipments would eventually once again contain a sick hamster, and spread it to the rest of them. The gatoraid was working to stop the wet tail, so why stop? Aside from the occasional customers asking "Why is the hamsters water red?", we mostly didn't have any problems with mixing up some thirst-quenching fruit punch every time we fed them. However, some employees in the store were a little lazy at times, and didn't want to go through the trouble of mixing new gatoraid at the end of every night. This is where the trouble started.
The hamsters were getting sick again, no one was sure why. It didn't happen as often as it did when we had the wet tail problem, but hamsters were dying on occasion. Since there was no apparent reason, we just ignored it for the most part, as the losses were not terribly regular.
The hamster water bottles can hold a lot of fluid. More then three critters crammed into a tiny tank will drink in a long period of time. When it came to feeding time, people would simply fill up a hamster water bottle full of gatoraid, and as long as the hamster still had some gatoraid left, they wouldn't bother too replace it. One day, I noticed that a bottle was almost out of it fruity red fluid and I took it out to add more. When I opened the bottle, I was hit with a wafting stench. It smelt like alcohol. The gatoraid was being left in the bottles so long that it was going bad. Not only this, but it seemed to be fermenting to a certain degree. We were poisoning the hamster, and possibly getting them right-smashed while we did so. It was a bad scene.
From then on, we decided to not give the hamsters sugary sports drink anymore. While regular cleaning and maintenance would have solved the problem, we didn't trust all the employees to routinely check to see which bottles had old gatoraid, and new gatoraid inside of them. So now, when hamsters gets sick, we simply quarantine it, and move one. The moral of the story is, don't drink really old gatoraid, it will fuck ya right up.
While that is the end of the hamster story, I think I will touch quickly on the life of a few other animals. For those of you who don't know, I keep an aquarium. Throughout my life I have almost always kept one. Just something me and my mother had fun with while I was growing up. My experience with keeping fish as pets is one of the things that got me the job at the pet store.
Currently in my fish tank, I am keeping a pet crayfish. A blue crayfish to be exact. I took pictures of it and posted it in my journal not long ago. I think many of you have already seen it. In that journal entry, along with the photo, I made a joke saying that when my miniature pet lobster grew big and strong I would devour his butter-smothered corpse. While the crayfish hasn't grown to a size where I can eat it for a meal, and never actually will, it has grown rather large. It's almost 6 inches from head to tail. The largest fish in my aquarium is only about two inches. It now spends it's days chasing around the fish in the tank and trying to grab them with it's claws. Fortunately for the fish, they are much faster then the coruscation, and can swim to the top of the tank where it cannot get them. Regardless of this fact, I am losing fish. Two in the past month. These fish are simply disappearing. Despite that I have seen no signs of struggle or violence, I can only assume that my crayfish is responsible. This monster sea-bug is not leaving any remains. I tried feeding it mosquito larva to appease it's insatiable hunger for fresh meat, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I almost feel the need to separate my blue-clawed little friend, but instead, I think I am just going to let him catch any fish he can, then replace his victims with more large and robust playmates. Hopefully is I match his size, he won't be so disposed to eat his neighbors. We will have to see. If nothing else, the crayfish is way fun to watch chase the fish around the tank.
Lately, I have been keeping my cat in the house. I have had this cat for 12 years now, and when I moved to Ottawa, I surrendered it to my parents. I didn't want to have to take it with me as I knew I would be moving around a lot. Often in places where I could not keep a cat. Most of my friends know this feline. It's name is pepper, and it may or may not be the anti-christ. I am voting for yes.
Pepper likes to attack people. He makes a sport out of it. He hides, the jumps out and bites people without being provoked. My dear sweet mother somehow doesn't mind this, and still keeps the cat. I sometimes think that she believes she can still train it to stop biting people, even though it has been doing this for 12 years of it's life. It's just not healthy. This creature draws blood!
My mother went away for a boat trip a few weeks ago, and asked me if she could bring the cat to Ottawa to live with me while she went away. Naturally, I couldn't refuse her. The cat has been okay for the most part. I had to warn my house mates of the cats blood-lust and instruct them not to pet the cat. This worked for a long time. The cat went about it's merry way not ignoring everyone as we ignored it. No one believed me that this cat had a cruel and savage heart hidden beneath it's slightly overweight frame. But just lately, it started again. The cat is leaping on peoples head from behind the touch and biting our skulls without warning. The house is a little on edge. We are living in fear of the cats next ambush. The people I live with are none too pleased with the beast.
Not only does Pepper have this strange and violent habit, but it also has a more grotesque hobby it like to conduct each day. It likes to hump stuffed animals. Two specific ones to be exact. The cat is indeed fixed, but regardless, it likes to get freaky with a plush god and lamb. At one point both this stuffed toys stood up, and made a somewhat visually pleasing offer to the cat. He has now raped these innocent childrens treasures so many times that they have been completely flattened from the cats regular weight upon them. The cats futile attempt at love making does however seem to calm it's rage for a short period of time, so we let it have it's way with his false-animal friends, and partially encourage him by placing them in a readily available spot. Naturally, my mother wouldn't let me take the cat without giving me his soft-spoken partners. My mother seems to think it amusing, or at least a means to an end when it comes to keeping the cat in check. She has named the toys "lamby" and "Winn Dixie" (winn dixie after the dog who apparently inspired a chain of convenience stores in the united states). The cat used to give it to a garfield doll, but that got all dirty and covered in cat hair, so we threw it out.
I guess I bring this cat thing to mind because as I write this journal entry the feline is mounted on it's sex-doll, thrusting away, and staring me intently in the eyes. This is most unsettling. I get the feeling I should have better things to do on a Saturday night.