Where Animals Come to Die

Like I said in my last post, my family is crap with pets. The official death toll is at 10, but I'm sure there were a few other unlucky souls who I forgot.

• Psalty the parakeet (1988) - Dad forgot to feed him while we went to Dallas on vacation. He just fell off his little perch and died.


• Hermit crab (1988) - I never named it because I never liked it. It was a gift. It just died in it's shell of natural causes I'm sure due to an emotionally-distant caretaker.


• 2 baby chicks (1989) - I don't know what happened for sure, they just disappeared. Probably ran away together after my sister threw one of them up in the air after it pooped in her hand.


• cat (the name slips my mind) (1992) - It was a cold January night when we gave it a bath and put it in the garage. Well, wet cat + freezing temperatures = dead cat, fried-to-death trying to stay warm under the refrigerator in the garage.


• Spanky the lab/pit bull mix (1993) - taken to the dad's feedyard to be a "cow dog"...the feedyard is where our pets go to die


• Snuffy the rabbit (1993) - Accidently left him in the front yard and the next door neighbor's dog bit his head off. The psychological effects of finding that headless rabbit still affects my sister to this day.


• Andre and Peter the rabbits (1994) - Our second-go at rabbits. We left them in our side backyard in their cage and forgot about them. Peter ended up being pregnant. Finding them a week later was a bit traumatizing for me.


• No Name the cat (1995) - Yep. That was his name. After Milli's second litter, we were fresh-out of names so that's what he got stuck with. He was squashed as mom was backing the suburban out of the garage. She felt pretty bad about it.

My sweet mom...and her camera phone.

I don't know if it's because there are no kids in the house or what, but my mom got a dog. Let me rephrase. She adopted a dog from the Deaf Smith County pound. I guess it belongs to both my parents, but my mom talks about it the most. Except my dad talked about it a lot when it fell out of his pickup window when he let it sit on his lap as he was driving his pickup to get it washed. I'm super glad it lived, because most of our pets die. I'll address this in my next post.

Ruthie is her name. She is some kind of mutt. She's cute though. I actually like her which is more than I can say more most animals. See...


I know I don't look very excited, but I am. I love this dog. It doesn't bark or jump. It just eats and like attention. I can handle that. That's my dad in the background. I know he's thinking, "I wonder how long this dog's gonna last..."

So my mom just got a phone with a camera for Christmas. And she loves it (and you're about to find out why). These are the last few texts I've gotten from her:

Text from mom: "Good morning! Yes this is my life."

Text from mom: "Ruthie just came home from the beauty shop with major electricity!"

Text from mom: "Ruthie taking a nap while you and dad are on the phone."

Text from mom: "This is the last one I'll send tonight. You might want to use this as your desktop wallpaper."

Text from mom: "She looks like she misses you."

Text from mom: "It's snowing again!"

Text from mom: "Ruthie likes to look out the window and watch cars go by in the morning."

I warned my mom that I was going to feature her texts on my blog so she sent me this:

Text from mom: "Since Ruthie is going to be a blog topic soon, I thought I'd get serious about my photography. :)"

So, I know I'm a little late. Mother's day was last like a week and half ago, but I want to say I love my mom. I love her so much more than I can express on this blog entry. And I love when she texts me with her new highfalutin camera phone. Happy super-late mother's day, mom. I love you...and I want you to move to California as soon as possible! Texas is too far away.

Photo courtesy of Josh Elliott. One of the best photographers I know.

I love my parents so much. This is my favorite picture of them ever. (again, courtesy of Josh.)