Here’s the thing: the Hub loves animals. I think you know that. He’s always mooning over the geese in the park; yesterday he trained three scared mothers and their even more scared offspring to not only feed the geese but to let them take the bread from their hands. A good day’s work.
That would be fine if his love of animals stayed in the park, but it spills over into our home and makes the thing I hate most in the world: clutter. We don’t have one gerbilarium, we have three, all different sizes. We have seven bags of food that our dead gerbil will never eat. We have three leads per dog and one spare in case we lose five; the dogs have two and five coats (Molly is nesh); boxes of dog treats; boxes of gerbil treats; and – and I really wish I was exaggerating here but I’m not – four huge binbags full of gerbil toys, courtesy of Freegle and car boot sales. How sad that you can’t take it with you, or Callie would be the happiest gerbil in heaven and I would be the happiest housewife on earth.
As well as all that, we have the fish. You may remember I rescued Bill last year from his little plastic tank and his lonely existence. The Hub approved so much that he immediately bought a proper tank and five other fish for company. Bill is thriving, as are the other four (one was a weakling who couldn’t cut it in the big world, sadly). So much so, they outgrew their tank and the Hub insisted we get them a bigger one. To be fair, the small big tank was horribly dark and dank compared to the big big tank.
The Hub replaced the stones with sand, bought more fresh plants, rocks and wood. And four shrimp; ostensibly because ‘they’ll clean the tank’ but really because ‘they’re sooooo cute.’
But there was one horrible, unforeseen and appalling side-effect: if the fish can see us, we can see the fish. Here’s Jock:
Or Adolf, as he’s now known.
Well ‘turn about is fair play’ as they say…so Adolf does have his rights. 😉
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and Hub won’t consider recycling the gerbil stuff?… I must admit, the new tank is very smart. Adolf’s brilliant.
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You’ve given me an idea for another post. Thanks 🙂
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I see another gerbil in your future …
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No, but almost a degu…
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That goodness for Hub. What would the world be like without animal lovers? Well done Hub, keep up the good work!
How’s Toby? I think he should have his own blog!
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He’s much better, thanks. As soon as he learns to touch type,I’ll set him up with one 🙂
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What a sweet guy! At least he takes care of the animals. I know guys who get the pet and let the wife do all the cleaning and feeding and etc.
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I missed this one when you wrote it, Tilly. Brilliant. Sandy shares your opinion of clutter. Fortunately, she married a guy who is clutter free–and if you believe that, a new gerbil will jump out of your ear. By the way, you can blame the little, black litter in the bottom of the fish tank on leftover apostrophes from Mein Kamph.
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I so wish that was true!! 😀
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