Lizards And Snakes, The Real Kind, Not the Other Kind
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Candice Bergen has come a long way. She used to sleep in a wooden box with Mortimer Snerd and Charlie McCarthy.
I like pets. Perhaps I should qualify that. I like pets assuming said pet is a doggie or a kitty-cat. I guess my list could include a budgie; although there isn’t enough meat on the drumsticks to bother turning on the oven. I remember a budgie, Joey Palmer, who used to hop around the breakfast table until someone left the door open one morning and he flew off to see the world. That was 67 years ago, he should be quite a ways away by now, probably married with eggs of his own. When my sister and I were kids, we had a dog named Gus. I’m not quite sure what happened to Gus, the story we were told was Gus wandered out to the middle of Mortimer Avenue in East York, turned right, and took off on the dead run and never came back. Whether he eventually teamed up with Joey I don’t know. I like to think so.
We have a truckload of dogs that parade by our house every day on their way to Homewood Park to do whatever dogs do. I find it interesting that few of the poop and scoopers know each other but they can call every four-legged visitor by name. “Oh, you must be Hannah’s Mom.”
I wrote a column many decades ago about some strange folks in Guelph who adopted a monitor lizard as a pet which is hardly in the usual realm of furry friends to snuggle up with while you watch old movies on the family Sylvania. Just in case they were offended by my comments, we moved leaving no forwarding address.
I may be stupid but I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would keep a pet so big it needs a truck licence to go walkabout down the street. Although I’m sure T-Rex (that’s his or her name – no one has the nerve to check) certainly kept the pit bulls away.
Not that I’m planning to buy one in the near future, but what does one feed the common household monitor? I shop for Nickolas, our pussycat, in the pet food section of several stores: I don’t recall seeing a Lizard Chow section at Zehrs, Metro or PetSmart. Although it could be mixed in with the alligator-python-Bengal tiger treats. Maybe monitors don’t have to be fed at all. Perhaps all an owner has to do to keep it nourished and its coat nice and shiny is to leave the gate open when the kids are coming home from school.
I had friends who had a boa constrictor. It wasn’t fully-grown. I doubt it was much more than 40 or 50 feet long. My late friend, Bill Price, and I were at their home one evening. Now Bill was not exactly Crocodile Dundee. To say he was timid around any animal that would just as soon crush him to death as look at him would be an understatement. I remember that Bill sat on the couch a full five minutes before he noticed the boa curled up on the end table fast asleep.
I’ve heard that in moments of sheer terror a person’s hair will stand straight up. I always thought it was just an old wives’ tale, but it’s true. Every hair on Bill’s head went right for the ceiling – all three of them. I wonder what he would have done if he looked into the ugly beak of a hungry monitor lizard — especially if T-Rex was flicking his forked tongue at him.
But T-Rex isn’t what I want to write about. It is a TV commercial we watched for PetSmart, a fine store with an excellent staff. (They are fine people. I wanted to stress that in case a lawsuit ensues.)
I have to admit the ending wiped the beginning clear out of my mind. I have no idea what they wanted us to buy if they were trying to sell us anything at all. However the woman kissing a big white snake at the end sent me right to Soldiers’ Memorial for a psychiatric assessment.
I am reasonable sure it wasn’t a cobra, a rattler or an anaconda since none of these three have been known to be (how shall I put it?) affectionate.
I don’t know why but I keep thinking the snake lady has probably had several puppy dogs and kitty cats over the years but for some reason they keep disappearing.
