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Well, since someone mentioned Dave Barry (my favorite columnist :),
I thought I'd post the complete version of the column quoted in .-1.
Sit down and make sure you're not drinking a hot cup of coffee (as I
was) when you read this...
THE JOYS OF HAVING A PET
by Dave Barry, Pulitzer prize winning columnist
copied from the Boston Sunday Globe, November 12, 1989
Everybody should have a pet. And I'm not saying this just because the
American Pet Council gave me a helicopter. I'm also saying it because my
family has always owned pets, and, without them, our lives would not be nearly
so rich in - call me sentimental, but this is how I feel - dirt.
Pets are nature's way of reminding us that, in the incredibly complex
ecological chain of life, there's no room for furniture. For example, the only
really nice furnishing we own is an Oriental rug that we bought, with the help
of a decorator, in a failed attempt to become tasteful. This rug is way too
nice for an onion-dip-intensive household like ours, and we seriously thought
about keeping it in a large safe-deposit box, but we finally decided, in a
moment of abandon, to put it on the floor. We then conducted a comprehensive
rug-behavior training seminar for our main dog, Earnest, and our small
auxiliary dog, Zippy.
"*No!*" we told them approximately 75 times while looking very stern and
pointing at the rug. This proven training technique caused them to slink
around the way dogs do when they feel tremendously guilty but have no idea why.
Satisfied, we went out to dinner.
I later figured out, using an electronic calculator, that this rug covers
approximately 2 percent of the total square footage of our house, which means
that if you (not you personally) were to have a random diarrhea attack in our
home, the odds are approximately 49 - 1 against your having it on our Oriental
rug. The odds against your having four random attacks on this rug are more
than 5 million - 1. So we had to conclude that it was done on purpose. The
rug appeared to have been visited by a group of specially bred, highly trained
Doberman Poopers, but we determined, by interrogating both dogs, that the
entire massive output was the work of Zippy. Probably he was trying to do the
right thing. Probably, somewhere in the Coco-Puff-sized nodule of nerve tissue
that serves as his brain, he dimly remembered the The Masters had told him
something about the rug. Yes! That's it! To the rug!
At least, Zippy had the decency to feel bad about what he did, which is more
than you can say for Mousse, a dog that belonged to a couple named Mike and
Sandy. Mousse was a Labrador retriever, which is a large enthusiastic
bulletproof species of dog made entirely from synthetic materials.
So anyway, Mike and Sandy had two visitors who wore expensive-down filled
parkas, which somehow got left for several hours in a closed room with Mousse.
When the door was finally opened, the visibility in the room was drastically
reduced by a raging down storm, at the center of which was a large quivering
down clot, looking like a huge mutant duckling, except that it had Mousse's
radiantly happy eyes.
For several moments, Mike and Sandy and their guests stared at this apparition.
Then Mike, a big, strong, highly authoritative guy, strode angrily into the room
and slammed the door. He was in there for several minutes, then emerged,
looking very serious. The down clot stood behind him, wagging its tail
cheerfully.
"I talked to Mousse," Mike said, "and he says he didn't do it."
People often become deranged by pets. Derangement is the only possible
explanation for owning a cat, an animal whose preferred mode of communication
is to sink its claws three-quarters of on inch into your flesh. God help the
cat-owner who runs out of food. It's not uncommon to see an elderly woman
sprinting through the supermarket with one or more cats clinging, leechlike, to
her leg as she tries desperately to reach the pet-food section before
collapsing from blood loss.
Of course, for sheer hostility in a pet, you can't beat a parrot. I base this
statement on a parrot I knew named Charles who belonged to a couple named Ed
and Ginny. Charles had an IQ of 260 and figured out early in life that if he
talked to people, they'd get close enough so he could bite them. He especially
liked to bite Ed, whom Charles wanted to drive out of the marriage so he could
have Ginny, the house, the American Express card, etc. So, in an effort to
improve their relationship, Ginny hatched (ha ha!) this plan wherein Ed took
Charles to - I am not making this up - Parrot Obedience School. Every Saturday
morning, Ed and Charles would head off to receive expert training, and every
Saturday afternoon Ed would come home with chunks missing from his arm.
Eventually, Ginny realized that it was never going to work, so she got rid of
Ed.
I'm just kidding, of course. Nobody would take Ed. Ginny got rid of Charles,
who now works as a public-relations adviser to Miss Zsa Zsa Gabor. So we see
that there are many "pluses" to having an "animal friend," which is why you
should definitely buy a pet. If you act right now, we'll also give you a heck
of a deal on a rug.
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