Pet Appreciation Day

Today is National Pet Day. Our family had several pets when I was growing up in our old house in Apo. One of mine I remember was a soft-shelled turtle named Tevye. This is his story as written in my Twitter timeline only expanded. Earlier in the day, I just caught the #IMDB prompt, "What is your favorite pet from the movies and tv" and after answering “I love ‘em all!”; it made me immediately think of ours.

3:15 am

Speaking of pets, here are my faves or at least were: Baboy (aka Aphrodite) the all black mixed-breed dog; Nessie, the green trained parakeet; Bartles 1 & 2, the hamsters who lived in my S.A.M. cage (small animal module); André and Rios the Dalmatian cousins; Coal the black lab; Brownie the cat; etc. etc…I remember we had so many pets at home. At one point in time, there were no more than10 dogs 🐕, some cats, fishes, white mice, ducks and rabbits! My oh my, our old house was like a menagerie!

7:38 am

To add to my pets, I have to include Tevye to my list. He was a soft-shelled turtle 🐢 I kept in a tiny aquarium in my bedroom. I was Tevye in a high-school musical we did of the If-I-were-a-rich-man-fame Fiddler on The Roof and he was named after my leading role. This is how it looks like (see googled image below) and I understand it’s a delicacy in China. You add chili sauce to it. Although I eventually moved him to the garage because I somehow got tired of taking care of him, I would never in my life think of eating him, even if I saw a  semi-grown one being displayed at the local Shangrila Restaurant once, and I remember my heart immediately sinking upon seeing this. I was even too revulsed holding him in my hands because he was too slimy to begin with and he lived in the water, not my favorite habitat for a pet. And even if they can grow up to 2 feet in length and about 50 years old or more in captivity, I never got the chance to know this first hand because after I moved him outside of my room and sort of neglected him in the garage, he just suddenly disappeared one day. There simply was no trace of Tevye after that. I kept thinking either he felt sad and simply died and disintegrated or some robber-spy outside the house snatched him and turned him into a pet (for me because I reneged on my responsibility) because I had imagination like that as well as me being a little paranoid at home during those times. Now imagine if I kept him in my room. Not only would he be still alive, I would probably have had many aquarium changes from that tiny one and…And? I don’t know. You tell me. Anyway, I remember he was a good art subject when I was studying Fine Arts in College and that alone keeps his memory alive in me. Hm.