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Bear with me on this one.
Up until last spring, we hadn't had any pets in a number of years. I really couldn't afford them, didn't have time for them, and hate the things cats and dogs bring into a person's home. Fleas. Worms. Apparently ass glands that need squeezing or something. Oh my god. That is gross.
Of course, the kids have begged for a pet for a long time. I spent a lot of time feeling guilty for depriving them of oneness with the animal kingdom and spent many random mind blanks by entertaining myself with visions of Timmy and Lassie, Jack and Laura, Old Dan and Little Ann, Ribsey and Henry, Hagrid and Fang, Cerberus and Hades. You know, a kid and his dog. Whatever.DMan received a few dollah bills for his birthday and made up his mind that he wanted a pet.
One Tuesday after his birthday, we were roaming through a local thrift store waiting forTuba Girl to finish her $10-every-nine-weeks drama class when I came across a hamster cage in great condition. Tuba Girl had a hamster when she was much younger and I somehow find rodents easier to deal with than larger animals prone to fleas and shitting in your shoes. Besides, our home is small and I'm not willing to give it up to some aggravating ass dog. Hamsters have their own homes that fit right on a counter.
I totally hyped up the hamster deal until DMan thought it was the most awesome thing ever. It was so awesome, we went right to the pet store and bought two hamsters right that very moment. In retrospect, I should have researched the whole thing a bit because it turns out I somewhat assumed the owner would never let me walk out the door with a male/female pair.
But he did and I did. And within a couple of weeks, I had to buy another cage after a crash course in caring for 14 baby hamsters.
Now, if you haven't yet understood how my title works with my story, you haven't given me time to connect the dots.
I do honestly believe we should live more naturally than we do.We should pay more attention to our bodies, to what we're putting into our bodies, to our hearts and souls and the world around us. That sort of crunchy, hippy dippy shit that gets me called out in real life when I pull something philosophically relative to the idea out of my ass.
Back to my hamsters. I separated pimp daddy from the mother as soon as I realized I'd actually bought two fucking hamsters. In all honesty, I counted back from the minute she spit out those babies to the day that I bought the pair and I'm pretty sure that bitch was knocked up when I gave her sanctuary in my home. Or they were "premature." (Shyeah. Right. *wink, nudge*)
I followed the directions and avoided cleaning the mother hamster's cage for the duration of the babies' confinement. (That was not pleasant.) Fed her well, making sure to cook a bit of egg whites everyday to keep her protien levels up. Just like a nursing human, protein and an overall healthy diet are important to a nursing hamster.
Hamsters who don't receive the necessary nutrients are prone to eating their babies to reabsorb those nutrients in an effort continue caring for the remaining babies. A mother hamster may also eat an unhealthy pup since its chances of survival are minimal. Hamster owners are told to never bother the baby nest because if the pups' scent changes, the mother may not recognize her own children, view them as interlopers and eat them.
Also, the bitch may just be batshit crazy and eat her babies for no particular reason at all.
I never quite knew whether my mother hamster was just taking care of natural business by eating sickly babies or if she was batshit crazy, but I'm pretty sure that has to be one of the two reasons since I thought I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing in terms of helping her be a good mother. She ate about 5 of the 14 pups.
I have a few stories about how I've ended up with this damned mini-zoo, but today's point isn't really about pets. It's about crazy ass people who think we should live as unevolved beings. Sure, animals give birth alone and they've done it from the time a baby animal of any kind thought it would be great to pop out of a vagina. However, animals also eat their own young or abandon them if they're not worth the time. Animals do not sit around thinking about how they should live, they just do it that way because that's the natural order of their life. Humans were supposedly born with enough sense to know that at least one "professional" should stick around to put a pair of scissors underneath the bed and to catch the football when it comes popping out of the chute. It definitely cuts down on the infant mortality rate.
The first time some MegaCrunchy nutbag eats her sick baby to reabsorb it's protein instead of rushing it off to the hospital and then blaming every medical professional but herself for the death of her child, then we might have something to talk about.
And on one hand, if I look at it objectively, I think that's not a bad plan at all. Everyone is complaining about how we're overpopulated and it's straining the earth's food supplies among other things. Maybe we should just be eating the sick and the infirm instead of propping them up in a false social system of "concern." Hell. The Donnor party did it. Maybe it's like eating veal.*
*I must note that eating soylent green is not an original idea of my own. Also, I have no idea if veal is good. I like to give my cow meat a running chance at life.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Why I Think Living Naturally is a Good Idea
Posted by KAR at 6:36 PM
Labels: Crunchy Mother Fuckers, Free Birthing, Hamsters, Pets
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6 comments:
Yeah, I just don't get the whole unassisted birth thing. I've tried, I really have, but just can't wrap my mind around it.
That being said, both of my kids were homebirths: With a trained and highly competent midwife. With prenatal care including ultrasounds and lab work. The midwife brings a handheld doppler for fetal monitoring, oxygen, and resuscitation equipment.
It's the absolute best of both worlds, IMO.
And no, there was no baby eating. And no placenta eating either, LOL although I do still have a freaking placenta in my deep freezer from kid #2. The midwife took the placenta from our first baby, but with #2 she refused because she said she was tired of bringing them home and she didn't have room for anymore in her garden.
So we double bagged the fucker and put it in the freezer. I suppose one of these days we're going to have to plant a tree or a bush or some other hippy-dippy-earthy kind of thing. I don't know what else to do with it, but just throwing it in the trash seems wrong...
Good for you for getting pets for your kids. And I said "Awww.." when I read that you cooked eggs for the little mother.
We do not keep our hunting dogs in the house, but one time we did when we had a sickly mother and pups. I cooked mashed potatoes for her every day (with milk for the protein) and she loved it.
Dogs also do the same thing with their dead puppies, but fortunately I've never seen it.
Oh my gosh, so what happened to all of those hamsters? I knew as soon as you said you bought two where this story was going! :)
I would rather have my zoo of dogs, cats, rats, and fish, than ever deal with breeding rodents again. Hampsters are evil and I refuse to own them, but we had mice. Our mice became many many many mice. It was awful.
I figure freaky people will think twice about coming uninvited into a house with 2 big dogs (of course I have never had to squeeze anal glands either...ewwwwww) My cats are good at keeping the mice out of my food stock and the rats? They stay in a cage and there is no denying those things are male. Biggest balls ever. Seriously. It's freaky. LOL
I love the hamster story. My little brother has gone through more hamsters over the years than he can even remember. A couple of them have gotten lost and then been found weeks later, still alive. He never had more than one at a time, though, so there was never any breeding.
I think people who want to have a home birth with that appropriate medical care is a cool thing for them.
I'm dying over the midwife refusing to take the placenta home. LMAO Maybe you should cure it and make a print stamp from it. That would be entertaining.
Personally, I don't think I would ever want to home birth because the first person to walk up to me and ask me what's for dinner after pushing a watermelon out my twat is going the way of the hamster. But that's just my house. Other people probably have better systems set in place.
Mary, had to give her the egg whites. There is no way I could look my kids in the eye and tell them it wasn't my fault the babies were being served as appetizers if I wasn't doing my best for them. This way I could just blame it all on the hamster.
I managed to find enough friends to dupe into taking the remaining baby hamsters off my hands. The mother actually died of what appears (according to the internet) to have been a stroke. I don't know what happened. She was fine one afternoon and then later on in the evening, she was lopsided. I nursed her, tried to keep her warm and hydrated half the night, but she died anyway. I think there was something wrong with her when I bought her because I still have the other hamster. There was some high drama with him a couple of months ago, but everything turned out well.
I can apparently deal with things that live in cages or aquariums, but things that are allowed to roam freely around my house or in the yard just disturb me to know end. Dogs eat their own shit. I've seen it. I do not want a dog's tongue anywhere near me. Cats are semi okay. I've seen them lick their asses. But they're just such a collection of parasite invitees. I cannot bring myself to remove a tick from a dog so it would just suffer in my world because I'd look at the dog and gag. We had yard dogs when I was a kid, but I just don't want to deal with it as an adult.
Melissa, the mother hamster had a bad habit of escaping. It took me a while to figure out she was pregnant because I couldn't keep up with her. The night she came out of hiding, crawled on my head, fiddled in my hair a second then ran down the entire length of my body, I knew she was evile incarnate.
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