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Perhaps I was never meant to be with animals. Of course the nature-“loving” part of me might attempt to disagree, but unfortunately, I think it’s closer to the truth than I want to admit.

It all started when I was about five, during a cold winter. I had just come home from Kindergarten and ran to my fluffy black miniature poodle, lovingly named Cocoa, to embrace him after a long day of scribbling alphabets and throwing sand in girls’ faces. I hurried to the living room and, since we were still potty-training him, lifted him out of the cardboard box and held him to my chest, his fur rubbing against my bare skin. I held Cocoa against me, carried him through the kitchen and made my way towards the bathroom, which were connected, to visit my mother who was just about to sit on the toilet. “Mami, Cocoa!” I exclaimed to her happily, cuddling Cocoa in my arms, and a pale expression of horror crossed her face. To her dismay, my shirt was covered in Cocoa’s poo. He became so excited that he decided to excrete his lunch without me noticing, as I was too caught up in his cuteness. My mother started incoherently screaming and I dropped Cocoa from being frightened. I stood confused as my mother ran our house pet out the door and into the chilly air.

Night soon passed and Cocoa still wasn’t back in my arms. I won’t say what exactly happened to Cocoa, for my mother’s sake, but I never saw him again.

Winter and spring passed quickly and I greeted summer with a smile. Childhood memories are usually full of such a season: mudcakes (because I hate pie), water gun fights, and adventures in the “forest.” I was lucky enough to live out in the country, away from the town and city, and had my share of our 11.5 acres in total to explore. At this point in my life, my mother was experimenting with gardening, or at least trying to, since rabbits, deer and other animals ate any signs of growth—but always left the peppers untouched. Regardless, sometimes my sister Vivi and I would help with planting seeds or uprooting of weeds, willingly, using small, handheld white-painted steel shovels, which were a bit heavy for our arms at the time. After our mother deemed our work done, we carried the shovels around, pretending them to be scepters, but also using them to crack sticks and dig up the earth so we could throw sand at each other, which makes me seem like I was obsessed with sand-throwing and perhaps I was. Just a little.

My favorite shoes at this stage of life were cowboy boots, which were also Vivi’s favorite. While stomping around, we would see lizards with long tails scamper about the porch and slip through shaded areas of the yard—such as underneath old automobiles or underneath our big oak tree. Science class was my favorite and I remembered reading about nerves when it came to tails of lizards, so I figured I might experiment with these findings. I lifted my shovel and let it forcefully land close to the tip of the tail of the unexpecting lizard and to my excitement…it worked! The lizard ran away, forever mentally-damaged, but the tail still moved! It flopped around like a fish out of water and I snickered at its tragedy. I am still not sure where this aggression came from, but I’ll blame it on Cocoa’s poo.

And of course that wasn’t the end of me chopping off lizard tails, it was only the beginning! It continued on for years, and even when I didn’t have a shovel handy, I’d use the heel of my cowboy boots to crush its tail from the body. The only problem with the boots is that sometimes I might stomp on it too hard that I’d end up just damaging its tail and not severing it or I’d smash it so hard the nerves disappeared…or something. I passed on these methods and experiences to my dearest Vivi, who adored mimicking me, and we went on innumerable tail-chopping quests.

Not long after discovering the joys of wounding lizards, Vivi and I found a new victim: frogs. Yes, most girls considered frogs to be disgusting and we were no different. We would never dare touch one, but whenever one of us spotted one, we’d send the other to run quickly into the house to retrieve a clear glass jar with a lid that was roomy enough for such a creature. I set Vivi to the task of setting the mouth of the jar over the frog to catch it since she was more agile than I, or at least she had better reflexes at the time. (She had them first since she was younger, and when I wasn’t torturing animals she was my prey. I gained my reflexes later after she was catching up to my height.) After the frog was caught underneath this jar, we slowly shifted it to the side, threw him in, and I quickly secured the lid. After we were sure that he couldn’t jump out, we’d add just a bit of water… to make him feel “safe.” Of course this façade quickly disappeared as staring contests get boring. Fast.

What to do with a frog trapped in a jar with no ways of escape? I pondered this awhile and then randomly decided to shake the jar viciously. I found this self-made “natural disaster” very entertaining—the way the frog’s eyes became wider and how it was forced from side to side, becoming smooshed against the glass. I shook the jar so that it was out of Vivi’s reach—since I’m older, I ought to have more time with our caught animals. I did this until my arms became tired and then proceeded to watch my sister wobble the jar with extreme enthusiasm until we got bored and let it go.

While my mother devoted her days to repetitive housewife activities, my father was a devoted mechanic and we had various automobiles sprinkled across the yard. Some were older than others and some didn’t even run at all, nonetheless, they were all there. We weren’t actually allowed to go near them and were warned of snakes that hid underneath the coolness of a car’s shade. One time, however, Father beckoned Vivi and I to look at something—an abandoned bird’s nest! Or so we thought. At first, we curiously dug in the little compartment of the old car to see and feel the materials used to make for nests. This was all very exciting until we heard something crack and felt something liquidly and gooey on our fingertips. This abandoned nest also had abandoned eggs. The result of the cracking of a few eggs emitted a horrible rotten stench, but Vivi and I cried after we realized we had just “killed” baby birds. No comfort from our father could make us feel any better.

The next day, however, we forgot this experience and continued our tail-chopping, jar-trapping quests.

Between playing with frogs, lizards, and baby birds, my mother decided that Vivi and I should take horseback-riding lessons. Being the nature-loving kids we were, we happily obliged! Because we were children, the teacher gave us ponies to ride on and my mother got to ride a shiny black horse. Vivi and I were jealous of this, but we ignored it as the lessons went into session. We learned how to “wave like princesses” and other superfluous “techniques” that we will never use, but the real wisdom would come from riding on the trail. The ponies and horse were behaving okay until this point, but as soon as my pony stepped out of the gate and onto the trail it just stopped and stood. Like a stagnant log, no matter how many times I kicked its sides with my cowboy boots it wouldn’t budge! The pony didn’t even eat grass, poo or anything. It just stood there while my sister’s pony was loyally following Mother’s horse that was being led by the instructor. I began wailing like any attention-needy child would, until the teacher turned around, stopped what she was doing and attended to my needs.

As soon as the instructor let go of the reins of my mother’s horse, the horse flew in the other direction, away from the trail, jumping over multiple fences only for my mother to hold on to her dear life. She screamed the entire way as it jumped, ran and bucked, attempting to get my mother’s weight off of him until, finally, her screams caught the attention of other employees. I’m not sure how they calmed the horse down, but even after the horse was standing still, like my pony, Mother was still terrified—barely breathing and her voice had become hoarse from the continuous screeches of horror.

Maybe that incident was partially my fault, but what can I say? Attention whores need attention. Those memorable moments of tears and screams were caught on my father’s video recorder the entire time. Why didn’t you save your wife, you evil man!

I’ve been trying to find the tape for a several years now, but I think Mother ripped it to shreds. She doesn’t stand for self-embarrassment, although other kinds of embarrassments, especially when I’m the subject, are fine with her.

By the time our lessons were considered over (the husband doing the necessary consoling to his wife while screaming redneck curses to the employees), my cowboy boots’ soles were covered in horse poop. I don’t know what is it with me and animal poop, but I still swear to this day that I didn’t see either three of those animals poop.

Aein is a Halfway Staff Writer

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