StupidPetTricks

THE LAMBY INCIDENT
This involves my dog and my boyfriend. Not the brightest creatures on the planet (sorry Adam). :-) So one day this summer, I was at work, it was my father, Adam and the dog at home. Male bonding time. Apparently the TV was not amusing enough for the humans, so they decided to amuse themselves by fastening my dogs favorite toy, Lamby, to his collar by the black loop sticking out of it's head. The lamb hung from the collar on one side of KC's head, so he, being the incredibly intelligent animal we all took him for, attempted to grab the toy with his mouth. The result was the lamb flipping to the other side of his head and smacking his neck. So he turns and tries to grab the lamb again, with the same results. And he kept going (try to picture this in your mind). I don't know how long they left the poor dog like this, but he hasn't been the same since.

I've had five gerbils over the past 5 years. The first two I raised in biology class and they came home to live with us permanently when I moved on to junior year. They were pretty smart- they knew how to climb steps and how to climb out of a laundry basket. The second two I bought while working at PETsMART. They are sisters also, but, unfortunately, are lacking somewhat in the intelligence aspect. We wanted to see if they were as smart as the others, so we put them in a laundry basket to see if the would climb out. The results were, I suppose, inevitable. They couldn't figure out how to get out. It never occured to them to climb out, no. But in a flash of brilliance, one decided to try and EAT her way out of the basket. Her determination was epic, but the basket remained unyielding. Eventually we gave up on the experiment and picked them up out of the basket. The teeth marks still remain on it, testimony to their unflagging determination.

My tenth grade biology teacher was an animal nut. At one time, we had three 55 gallon tanks, one 45 gallon tank, many gerbils and mice, a hamster, two rabbits, an iguana, a red sided skink, several frogs, a tarantula and two snakes. We didn't have the best of luck with the snakes- the one was a wild caught black rat snake, a juvenile. Maybe 12" total stl. Max. He escaped several times, and the last time, we never found him (but don't worry guys, I'm sure he left your school by now ;-) ). The second snake was a gorgeous hand raised California King Snake. Tame beyond belief- he'd just ride around on your hand, twining in and out of your fingers. He was about 9" stl in early spring of 1997.
Around April, I went into the back room to feed the snake his frozen & thawed pinky for dinner. I opened the sweater tub we were keeping him in... no snake. He usually hid under the newspaper- but, on closer investigation, no snake. I looked all over the back room before telling my teacher that the snake had escaped. We gave up looking after about a month, and May came around. We went on summer break and my teacher moved back to Ohio.
The next year was my junior year. I was done with biology, and the year was uneventful- downright dull, actually.
One day in April, I went to lunch and sat down with my friends. Meghan came over to me and said "Did you hear?" and she told me to go to our old biology room and look in the remaining 55 gallon tank. I went after school- there in a 55 gallon aquarium, curled around a branch- a two and a half foot California King Snake. Yep, it was our boy- after an entire year of being AWOL, he showed up, of all places, on a sticky mouse pad in the CAFETERIA. We weren't sure if we should be happy he was found, or disturbed that there were that many mice and rats in the school that a 9" snake could grow over 2 feet in a year. The teacher ended up taking him home (sweet as ever) and he lives with her to this day.