Furry Friends

I love animals.  If it's furry you can probably bet that I will love it.  I sometimes wonder if you are born an animal-lover or if you become one the more you are actually around animals.  I guess that doesn't even really  matter, so let me just dive in...

Growing up we ALWAYS had some kind of animal roaming around.  We certainly always had dogs and cats...but there were definitely a few wild cards in there. 

My Grandpa was a mailman who ran the rural mail route, and you can only imagine what kind of critters he found along the dusty gravel backroads of Weiner!  My brother and I had so many pet turtles that I couldn't even begin to count!  As soon as we saw grandpa's dust-encrusted Ford pickup pull in the driveway, we would head outside to look in his truck bed...what would it be this time?!  Of course, it was always a turtle.  My brother and I would dash inside to prepare the turtle's new home. Mom would grab a bucket that our family endearingly (and literally) coined "the puke bucket", (this surely needs no further explanation). I would snatch a few lettuce leaves from the fridge, and in we would place our new turtle friend.  We'd poke his shell a few times and name him something really unique and creative...like Terry the Turtle.  After a couple of days, Dad would drive the little guy to the farm where he would release the turtle into a pond.  Freedom at last!!

Then there was my beloved pet fawn...
The summer before my 2nd grade year my Dad found a young fawn on his farm.  Worried that the fawn's mother had abandoned it, he kept checking on it for a couple of days.  After concluding that the fawn had indeed been abandoned, he scooped the little weak baby into his arms and carried him right smack into our house.  I can remember it so clearly...probably because I literally freaked out with joy!  A baby fawn?!  For me?!  The fawn walked right up to me and bleeted, and I petted his little wobbly, white-spotted body.  He took to me quickly.  I fed him from a bottle and named him Comet.  Hey, I've always been obsessed with Christmas, and this was the closest I was EVER gonna get to owning a reindeer!  We bought Comet a brand new yellow dog collar, and I made an adhesive nametag with Dad's old school label maker.  You know the kind. A local man had some wooded and fenced-in land that he raised deer on, and he agreed to let me keep Comet out there with the other deer.  (It's Northeast Arkansas, people. Raising deer isn't the least bit odd.). Every day that summer Dad would drive me out there to visit my new friend.  Comet always remembered me, too.  He would run right up to me, nuzzle me, and search for his bottle.  After a while the other deer got so used to me that they, too, would walk up to me.  So I started packing apples for them.  Dad said I looked like the Pigeon Lady from Home Alone what with all the deer circled around me!
 I'm not all that sure what ever happened to Comet.  One day I was ready and waiting, apples in-hand, for Dad to come home and take me to see Comet, and the next thing I knew he was telling me that Comet was gone...that the man said Comet ran away.  To this day we think something is off about that explanation, but regardless, my little almost-2nd-grade heart broke when I heard the news.  I ran upstairs; hid in my closet and just cried my eyes out.  I cried over a baby deer.  But that's what pets do to us.  They weasel their way into the hearts of the young and old and become family.  And like any relationship...it really hurts when it ends.

Comet and my totally trendy outfit

Perhaps the thing I love most about furry friends is their natural ability to love. Except for turtles...and hamsters...and fish.  For some reason I just never remember feeling any kind of reciprocated love from our pet turtles in the puke bucket, or our hamster, or our fish. Anyway...

I really believe there are 2 things about pets that make them so blasted desirable and cherished. 
1. They stay when change endures.
2. They always love us just as we are.

Think about it.  They give us the two things I would venture to assume that the entire human population innately desires--someone to stick it out when life throws in some CRAZY and unexpected changes, and someone to love the very best and the very worst of us without leaving.  Sure there are other things that make pets great, but at least for me these two are the best parts.  Don't you love when you come home, and your dog is so overjoyed to see you that you think they just might spontaneously combust?  It's good stuff.  It's a constant.  It might just be one of the few predictable things in life, and that sure does feel nice!  Pets can't judge.  They can be just as happy living on the streets with a homeless individual as they can be living on a compound with an affluent family.   They don't expect all the bells and whistles.  They just want you. 

So here's to our furry friends!!

Radar

 Basil Bunny

Scout (she was a good sport that Halloween)

Cleo Catra

And here's to my NEW furry friend...meet Jazzy!!!  I  rescued her 3 weeks ago from having to "walk the green mile" at the Jonesboro Humane Society.  She's one year old this June and is my sweet little rascal.

 Jazz

At the NEA Humane Society about to adopt her! Ignore my brother in the background; he always tries to ruin pictures!!

Jazz's adoption day

And this is why FURRY FRIENDS are one of my FAVORITE THINGS!!!