Life With A Zoo

Think YOU'RE an animal lover?... What do you get when you put a single mother, her maturing daughter, and over 15 exotic and domesticated animals all together in one house?...my life with a zoo.

Friday, July 15, 2005

In the begining...

Yes I'm an Animal Lover...
Hi, how'ya doin? My name is Suzie, I'm 20 and I live with my mother and our strange collection of multiplying pets. If you're here then you must be curious about where it all began, so here it goes...
In the Begining...
I was born in a (then) small town in Louisiana, it just so happened that my soulmate was born then too at around the same time (crazy, I know right!?). We had alot in common blue eyes, a fondness for milk and being outside. Her name was Sugar and she was a beautiful white long-haired feline. Sugar was part of the family, my sister, my friend. She moved with us and put up with us as we took in strays and relocated them. Then a new arrival came to the family in the form of a fluffy little blonde puppy we called Nikita. She didn't stay little for very long. Then again most husky/akitas don't. Any way, to cut a long story way short, our endless home animal rescue continued on durring life until we had several "stay at home" cats and two dogs.
A Sad Day...
This is where the story turns a bit tragic, but please don't let this discourage you from reading on. Sugar was getting up in years and we had moved to a semi'small town in Kentucky, right on the border of Ohio. We lived in a two story house on a moutain (don't get me wrong, it was a well colonized mountain but a mountain nontheless). Sugar came and went as she pleased she was real smart about cars but people were always running the stop sign at my corner. And as the story goes one day I came home from school to total heartache. My mother and I sobbed like babies and I cursed my street at the tender age of 9. It came time to lay her into the ground and there was just no way I would leave her body to rest in a place where we had known so little peace. (That town was a hellhole) And that was when it became apparent to my mother and me that we were the very definition of "animal lovers". People take such care in placing a deceased human being they loved, why shouldn't they do the same for their beloved pets? I pleaded with my mother that there must be something we could do. Sugar had to be laid to rest in the one place she loved most, a cozy spot in my grandparents back yard beneath an old swing set. It was the one place we knew she would have liked to be placed.
When the going gets Tough, the Tough get a Cooler and some Dry Ice...
We thought long and hard and then my genious of a mother gave her input. She didn't insist I was being silly, she didn't tell me I'd get over it, she said "well.. we could freeze her and mail her to grandma and pawpaw". I was only in 4th grade but it sounded like a plan. So for a few days if you wanted a pop-cicle they were "in the freezer next to the cat"(...I know I know, what can I say) When she was "frozen solid" we packaged her up nicely in ice in a cooler in a box and FedExed her to Louisiana where she was burried just where she belonged (can you believe the ice didn't even melt {FedEx plug}) . So I won't linger on anymore in the details. She still rests there to this day and to this day that story never fails to weird out class mates or any others who might happen to ask "So you're an animal lover?".