They Said They'll Catch Me One Day, Napping

Now that I am not surrounded by the constant and persistent crazies of New York, I thought that I was going to need to start using my imagination more. And then I drove past the inspiration of inspirations, a little Godsend called Jurassic Pets. I was so excited, I thought my head was going to fall off. What kinds of scary, pre-historic animals would be for sale at Jurassic Pets? I had to wait a few minutes to find out, as a note on the door said that the owner was picking up some new fish from the Albuquerque airport. There was a man in front of the pet store who further explained that the flight could have been delayed, etc., but that I did not have to worry because the owner would return. He ended his explanation with the statement, "I work here." Just a thought- if you actually worked there, wouldn't you have a set of keys?

The owner returned 15 minutes later. I think I had been picturing a man walking off of a plane with a large glass bowl of fish, which would go through some sort of disease test before being handed to the eager and waiting owner of Jurassic Pets. Instead, the owner came in carrying large, white boxes labeled "Tropical Fish. This Side Up." So this is what it feels like to be wrong. Interesting.

On first appraisal, it looks like a standard pet store. Wall of reptile terrariums. Wall of fish aquariums. Two parrots, one dove, and one cockatiel. That is the end of the normal pets and the beginning of the jurassic pets. There is a large terrarium with an alligator named Freddie, who is not for sale, and a number of plastic boxes with hissing cockroaches, tarantulas, scorpions, and millipedes (centipedes? come back to me, sixth grade science, come back to me!) I have a continual fear that I will be in a pet store when all of the glass on the aquariums and terrariums will simultaneously break, leaving me swimming in a thick clump of snakes. Though that may be a little extreme, the four-month-old St. Bernard puppy named Avalanche who was bounding around the precariously-stacked plastic boxes of tarantulas, upon which the large glass bowl of scorpions was perched, seemed like a really, really terrible idea.

As it turns out, the pet store prides itself on being interactive. An excited customer pointed to the ceiling, where there were large, hanging tree branches. I was told that the snakes are usually hanging on the branches instead of being confined to their nice, safe cages.

Anyway, I went back today. I wore a hat, which was a good call since the snakes were in fact hanging from the ceiling. I am in the mood to nurture and think that I should wait on having a baby until I have things like a husband or a way to make a living or my own room. Instead, I am in the market for a pet. By the time I left the pet store, I was pretty set on getting a Jackson chameleon (see photo,) because I think I could legitimately tell people that I had a pet dinosaur. That was a bad idea for me to look up pictures of Jackson chameleons just now, because now I really want one again. The pet store owner said that he could also get me a female chameleon so that I could easily breed them. He said, "Put them together and he will get RIGHT on her." It was an awkward pet store moment. I like the idea of breeding dinosaurs, but there is always the chance that I will not be able to sell them, and then I will become that weird reptile lady who goes to the grocery store with her pet dinosaur on her shoulder and stares down other people as if they are the weird ones for not having a reptile crawling down their arm.

Another option is the horseshoe crab. They look like garden tools, but even as I type this I am bored with the idea, so I guess that answers that. Maybe I could nurture my neighbors by bringing them brownies. It is much less of a commitment.