Excuse this bit of geek spasm. In fact, this realization is a decade or two late. It's just that I was such a big fan of Murdock that I named my first pet dog after him, albeit spelling it as Murdoch. Murdoch was a black and white spitz-mutt and was given to me by the parents of this chick of a classmate in pre-school. That's what I remember, but I was five then.
I used to be such an, dare I say it, animal lover, even if, nowadays, I couldn't care less for PETA unless I was shooting the naked women in their ads. I think part of it was because my dad loved animals too and had them all over the house. We had dogs, birds, and I'm not sure, but maybe fish too. Even now, I think my dad can't wait to retire so he can have more time to hang out with his avian friends.
Part of it was also because I was fascinated by the
About Animals volume from that
Childcraft set of books that any self-respecting child of the 80's must have had. I loved that book. I had a hard time getting through the Reptiles and Amphibians section though, and that full bleed page of a snake's head still makes me shudder at the memory. But the book fed my love for animals, so much so that I wanted to be, at one point, a veterinarian.
But then things didn't quite work out for me. I had a pair of white mice that I got from the pet shop. I got them a nice cage, a water feeder, and that little running wheel they could exercise on. They died the same day I got them. I put them in a little matchbox, dug a hole in my grandma's garden and buried them. The next day, the hole was there but my mice were gone. My grandma said the cat might have dug them out. Over twenty years later, I have a feeling that my grandma, God rest her soul, might have poisoned them, dug them out, and disposed of them properly. The hell she was going to have mice in her house.
Then I got one of those nice colored birds that they used to sell outside churches. It had a nice bamboo cage that we hung on the veranda. That afternoon, the cage was torn open, and my little colored maya was gone. Grandma blamed the cats again.
I finally got a pair of small turtles. I made sure I fed them right and cleaned their round goldfish bowl religiously. One day the maid said that one of them had escaped by piling the rocks up against the side of the goldfish bowl and climbing out. What The Hell, right? After a few days, the second turtle stuck it's head under the rocks instead of inside his shell, and broke his neck. I think it committed suicide, out of the sheer loneliness of being left behind.
Also, by this time, my parents had broken up, and I had to grow up really fast as a self-preservation thing. I also found books, comics, and eventually girls. I wanted to be a businessman, a lawyer, a detective, a spy. Animals fell by the wayside. I am still freaked out by reptiles and amphibians though. They're the worst things in the world.
