Where To Pet A Dog

Seconda is a big-time animal-lover. We've never had one of those in the family so we're at a bit of a loss as to how to meet her animal-loving needs. We certainly can't get a dog or cat. The cat would be OK if I weren't very allergic to one. And I guess the dog would be OK too, if I had a fleet of servants to care for the animal and I lived in a mansion where the dog could have it's own wing, which is to say a place he could go where I didn't hear him. Neither of these possibilities are likely to occur, though. So, I found myself googling. "Playing with animals in NYC" and I found this:

Where To Pet a Dog

This webpage wins the prize for Most Useful Webpage ever. It includes such startling obvious tips as:

Visit a pet store

and

Hang out around dog parks

and

Make a friend with a dog

I guess it's what I get for running a stupid google search. Just as there certainly are dumb questions (don't believe those who tell you there aren't), there rare dumb google searches, and "playing with animals in NYC" is definitely among them.

Now. go hang around a dog park like a creepo.

Fighting over dead hermit crabs

Is it just my kids or will siblings fight over anything?

Yesterday, one of our hermit crabs died. In point of fact, it was three or four days ago that the crab died - or, I should say, that we discovered him dead. He might have died up to a week before that. Who knows? Those animals are nocturnal so during the day they do nothing and look dead anyway. Its no wonder the kids haven't played with them, or even looked at them, in weeks. In fact, I've forgotten all about the crabs. Every so often, I'll pass by the Hermitage, as I like to call it, and I'll see their unmoving shells and I'll wonder if anyone in our house is making the slightest effort to keep them living. David is, I think. He's the zookeeper of the house, as it relates to the actual animals, and not just the children that act like animals. I'm pretty sure he wets the crabs' sponge which is the only thing one must do to keep those primitive life forms in good health.

Anyway, one night a few days ago, David said: "One hermit crab is eating the other."

"WHAT?" I cried. As you may know, I'm not the biggest animal-lover out there, and if I was, hermit crabs certainly wouldn't be the animals that won my affection but even I draw the line somewhere, "Is it alive or dead?"

"Which one?"

"The one being EATEN!"

"Dead. Definitely dead," replied David, "Though I can't tell if it was dead first or dead once the eating began."

"David," I said, "That is really fucked up."

And then, "Do something!"

He did. He threw the dead one out in the garbage.

I figured that he'd handle breaking the news to the kids. Honestly, they haven't so much as glanced in the direction of the Hermitage in weeks so I didn't think they'd be all that broken up about it.

Which was naive, on my part. I found this out when I accidentally broke the news to them while telling it to their part time babysitter.

"Yeah, we're down to one crab now. A one-crab household," I told her.

"What?" exclaimed Seconda, "What happened to the other one?"

"Well, honey, it died," I informed her gently.

"WHICH ONE?" she shrieked, "Whose crab?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly, "They both look exactly the same to me. I can't tell them apart."

"It was Primo's!" she affirmed.

"WHAT?" Primo piped up, "My hermit crab died? How do you know it was mine?"

"I just KNOW!"

"That is SO unfair! Why didn't SECONDA'S die?"

He did not appear to be upset that the crab had passed on, just upset that Seconda's hadn't.

This, among other reasons, is why you should not acquire hermit crabs. They may be easy to keep alive - requiring little to no effort -- but they will cause problems, even after death.

"Now what?" Primo asked, "Its just not fair that Seconda has a pet and I don't."

I was considering telling them to share the existing crab -- a joint custody situation -- or pointing out that we don't actually know whose crab died, seeing as they were pretty much interchangeable -- but then I decided to go with: "Life isn't fair."

Which is true enough.

"But to console you after this terrible heartbreak, I will allow you to play video games for ten minutes. WIll that soften the blow?"

"YES!" Primo exclaimed.

RIP Hermes. I may not be an animal-lover, may not even be able to identify the crab in a line-up but I do remember his name.

A way to wake up

I woke this morning to Primo dancing around the room and climbing on the furniture in a way that seemed surprisingly goal-oriented.


”What are you doing?” I muttered.


“I am teaching the fish to play hide and seek,” he replied cheerfully.


Is there a better way to wake up? To think, there was a time I used to wake to an alarm clock.

Fish Out of Water

What follows is the best Seconda story ever, the one that most exemplifies her – the good, and the bad. However, if you work for PETA, I’d advise you to skip this post.

Last Saturday afternoon, David went out to do some grocery shopping and our good friend Lou dropped by. I was talking to Lou and trying to keep Primo from hitting him over the head with pillows so I didn’t notice for a few minutes that Seconda was nowhere to be seen, or heard, There was a Sec silence which I know from experience means trouble. So I peeked into her bedroom and saw her little feet sticking out from under the tent which cover her bed.

This should have sounded the alarm in my head.

Sec is quiet + Sec is hiding in her bed = something is being destroyed.

And, in fact, the alarm did sound. But she was giggling and moving around so I could tell she was all right. I figured it was my furniture or belongings that were probably suffering and while this level of suspicion usually prompts me to intervene, on this particular Saturday I was friggin’ tired. I’d spent a morning at the beach saving her from being swept to sea. The kid doesn’t give me any downtime in between intervention-worthy incidents and I needed some. Plus, I had a guest over and I felt like being a decent host.

So I said to myself, “She’s getting older. Just because she is quiet does not mean that she’s making mischief. Aren’t I EVER going to be able to trust her?”

And the answer, of course, is “No.” Or at least, not for a very long time.

I went back in the bedroom a few minutes later, when I couldn’t quiet the nagging feeling within me. As soon as I walked in, I knew something had happened with the fish. The fishtank where Mr. Black and Mr. White -- hey, the kids named them -- have been living and thriving for the past 8 months or so, is located on top of a dresser and next to the dresser is a toy chest which usually has a big pile of books on it. When I went into her room I saw the pile of books on the floor and Sec standing on the chest.

“Honey?” I started, anxiously, “What are you doing?”

She turned to me with a shit-eating grin on her face. And I mean, from ear-to-ear. The grin was so blatantly guilty it was as if the words “I DID SOMETHING BAD” had been written on her gleaming teeth in permanent marker.

“I saved the fish!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. Then she turned her attention to the tank, and I did too, dreading what I’d find.

There was Mr. Black, our dear pet, belly up at the top of the water. Dead as a doornail.

My first thought was. “Maybe he’s not dead, but almost dead, Maybe I can save him!” What do you do in these situations? I mean, you can’t do CPR on a goldfish. You can’t call the vet. The fish was belly-up. The fish was a goner.

“What HAPPENED?” I cried, trying to remain calm

This sent Sec running away, to hide in her bed tent. I followed after her, taking deep breaths.

“Did you touch Mr. Black?” I asked.

She smiled and shook her head “No.”

“Honey,” I ventured, sweetly, “Mommy’s not going to be mad, OK? Just tell me the truth. Did you take the fish

out of the tank?”

She grinned and nodded “Yes.”

“And then what did you do with him?”

“I put him in my bed!” she exclaimed with delight, “I wanted to snuggle him!”

“In your BED?”

She nodded, unable to repress her glee: “Mommy, when I put him down, he went flop, flop, flop!!”

And she began to demonstrate with her body how the fish had thrashed about wildly, this way and that. She didn’t know the poor thing was meeting his Maker, she thought he was finally PLAYING with her. She probably felt like she hit the jackpot, like FINALLY, after all these months of being a total snooze-fest, this fish is the life of the party. “This is more like it,” she probably thought, “All he needed was to get out of the water.”

I’m not going to lie: I was dismayed. Downtrodden. My daughter just takes such a joy in destroying things – knocking over block towers, scribbling on her brother’s painstakingly-penned drawings, smashing lipstick on the floor, throwing jewelry in the air conditioner -- I just felt sad that now we had fishicide to add to the list.

Of course, she didn’t really MEAN to kill him. Seconda adores animals, beyond anything I can possible relate to. David, Primo and I are highly apathetic to pets, but it is really her abiding passion. She stops every single dog on the street and chases butterflies and cuddles friends’ cats. She even cozied up to these two big gray rats that Primo’s friend kept as pets (“Oh my cute little ratty!”). She wants a pet she can play with, I understand that.

But the fact remains that she scooped our goldfish out of the water with her bare hands placed him on her pillow for a while and then, when she heard me coming, grabbed him and tossed him back in the water, where he was currently floating.

I gave her a talk about how fish can’t live outside the water, how she had hurt Mr. Black and how she had to prepare herself for the fact that this was probably a booboo he couldn’t recover from.

“I think we’d better check on him.” I said,

We walked over and there, in the tank, was Mr. Black REVIVED from death. He was swimming around! Not with a lot of vigor, admittedly. He looked dazed and horrified, like he’d seen something no fish should ever have to see – two blue eyes getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer and then one chubby hand with green nail polish looming over the water. But he was swimming.

It was a fish miracle.

We went back to the living room, where Lou was now having a pillow fight with Primo and tried to forget the incident. But we are definitely buying a top for the fish tank. And if I could locate on, I’d get Mr. Black a fish therapist.

Stayin' Alive

First there was Swimmy, the goldfish produced by a magician for Primo at his 5th birthday party. He didn’t last a week. Then there was Bandana, who made it almost three weeks before going belly-up. Next was Beethoven, the beta fish, who died within three days.

But Mr. Black and Mr. White have been swimming around in fishy glory for almost six months now. I credit the filter I conceded to let David buy for the tank, finally. At first, I didn’t think it was worth the expenditure.

“How do fish live in the ocean or river where there are no filters?” I argued, “The point of having a fish as a pet is for it to be cheap and easy! Otherwise you get a gerbil.”

After three fish died in just over a month though, David took a hard line. He single
-handedly provides all the care for the fish -- the cleaning, the food, the love and affection -- and he told me that he would not take care of any more fish without a filter in the tank. He also said he couldn’t bear to look at their depressed, lonely little fish faces, so I suggested we buy two instead of one.

Fourth time’s a charm I guess because Mr. Black and Mr/ White have been staying alive better than John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. They are doing so well, in fact, that Primo finds it rather strange.

“Mr. Black and Mr. White are living so long its like they are in the Bible!” he exclaimed.

“Because people in the Bible live a long time?” I asked

“Becase it’s a MIRACLE!” he clarified.

And then he made the following suggestion, “When they die, we should have a party. To celebrate how long they lived.”

I said I thought that was a superb idea.

Bedtime noises

Thanks to the incredibly small size of our home, I can hear everything that goes on in my kids’ room at bedtime. It doesn’t matter where I am – the living room, the kitchen or my bedroom -- it all comes through crystal-clear. And here is what I’ve learned:

You don’t want to hear the kids laughing at bedtime. Because laughing always leads to crying.

Crying, however, never leads to laughing

And the absolute worst thing to hear coming out of the bedroom is silence. Silence equals a big damn mess.

Lately when Seconda is silent, it means she is torturing the pets – two amiable goldfish names Goldy and Whitey (look, I didn’t name them that – it was Primo’s bright idea and how could I explain that calling creatures “Whitey" isn’t really done?). Goldy and Whitey reside in a tank with no lid, on a very high dresser next to the kids’ bed and lately Sec has made it a habit of climbing right on up and dropping crap like dirty socks, stray Legos and discarded foot items into the tank. Those poor creatures must shudder when they see Seconda’s big blue eyes approach.

So, the only thing I like to hear coming out of that bedroom is low-level bickering, the kind unlikely to spur the children to action, and babydolls being disciplined.

“Snow White, I told you a million times, you CAN’T put your face in the fishtank! You leave those fishes alone! You are driving me CRAZY!”

May not lead to sleep but it won’t lead to crying either. Perfect.

Little Critters, Big CIty

The summer issue of the Park Slope Reader is now out, complete with my newest Dispatch from Babyville. You can pick one up in a coffee shop near you, or, if you're living beyond the Reader's reach, you can read the essay here:

Little Critters, Big City

By Nicole Caccavo Kear

I had a pet-less childhood with nary a dog or hamster or even a goldfish to call my own. To say that my mother is not an animal lover is to put it mildly. Though a reasonably feeling woman in general, she is downright coldhearted when it comes to creatures covered in fur, feathers, or fins. Not as bad as Cruella da Ville, but close. I guess I inherited this animal aversion because it never bothered me that I didn't have a pet. I had a kid sister, and that was sort of the same thing.

My kid sister, on the other hand, pined for a pet. Melissa's pining (and whining) led to a series of what I will euphemistically call "eclectic" pets, the kind a kid can keep in the city without disturbing the domestic peace too much. The first was Slimy, a snail gifted to her by a waiter at Ko Chine Restaurant in Chinatown. The waiter was impressed by Melissa's appetite for escargot and thought she might savor a live snail as much as she did the ones she swallowed whole. My sister shared one and a half magical days with Slimy before he, for no reason whatsoever that we could discern, suddenly stopped sliming.

After that she had to content herself with taking the classroom fish home on holidays, until one day my mother accidentally (we hope) flushed him down the toilet. Guilt ridden about the fish-slaughter, she consented to buy Melissa a bird. So they went to the pet store and came back with Freddy, a one-eyed, skittish cockatoo.

My sister did not look too happy with this, her long-awaited pet.

"Why does he have only one eye?" I asked.

"He was on SALE," she replied sulkily, "because he's missing an eye from having a fight with another bird. Now he's a nervous wreck."

"We rescued him!" my mother exclaimed, like she was auditioning to play Dian Fossey in the remake of Gorillas in the Mist. But my sister and I knew better than to buy the act - my mother had bought the bird because he was a bargain.

Over time Melissa grew to love Freddy, and when he issued his last, anxious chirp, our cousins handed her down their bird, a green parrot named Captain, who was as bona-fide a pet as a child of animal-haters could hope for. So, in the end, her dreams of pet ownership were realized.

Fast forward twenty years and you will find the cycle of pet-withholding has repeated itself. Only now I'm the meanie and Primo and Seconda are the pitiful city kids without a canine sidekick.

It's not that I hate animals. I just don't want them as roommates. Little critters, no matter how smart or loving, like to roll in the mud, lick their butts, and eat garbage, and I think that's fine, that's totally cool, as long as it's not happening in my house.

There's also the fact that I can hardly manage caring for myself and my two children, who seem more like animals every day, which leads me to believe it's not a great idea to enlarge our family. Every plant we've ever had dies a slow, painful death of thirst and is left to wither for several weeks before it's disposed of. The only living things that do thrive in our apartment are the animals that live there without my permission, the endless parade of mice, not just any mice but a mutant strain of defiant super-mice who are invulnerable to death and skitter around the kitchen corners despite my unflagging efforts at hole-plugging and crumb-collecting.

Point is, I've got my hands full.

But children don't understand logical reasons such as these. Children just want. And my 4 year-old wants a creature to call his own. In his desperation, he has turned to bugs. Ants, in particular.

In the afternoon, he has taken to patrolling the stoop for stray ants that he can pluck from their happy life on the pavement and drag into our inhospitable home.

"I FOUND ONE!!!!" he shouts, like he's struck gold. Seconda runs over and bends down so that her face is a half inch from his fingertip.

"Oh you so tiny, you so coot my little Anty! I LOVE YOU, ANTY. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!" she bellows.

"Too LOUD! You're going to scare the living daylights out of him!" Primo scolds.

Then, like he's a surgeon and I'm a nurse, he orders, "Habitat!"

I comply, handing over the plastic dome with a yellow handle, kindly manufactured by Fisher Price to satisfy the bug-capturing yen of children like my son.

"Get in there you little Anty you!" he coos, dropping the sucker inside and shutting the door, which must sound like a death knell to poor old Anty. No doubt word has gotten out in the Park Slope insect world about Primo's appetite for ants; the sight of that habitat cum torture chamber must send them running for broke.

Primo captures a bunch more, gleefully narrating to Anty that he's delivering some roommates for him so he won't be lonely in there, and then, when the habitat is full of writhing, squirming, dirty bugs, we get into the old "Can I bring them inside?" debate.

The first time this debate unfolded, I was a novice, and feeling guilty that I'd deprived the kids of a Fido or a Mittens, I agreed to letting the bugs come upstairs, provided - and this was the dealbreaker - that the habitat door remain closed.

Rookie move, I know. But Primo's my first and parenting him is full of rookie moves.

About two minutes after we brought the impromptu ant farm upstairs I heard a shriek.
I ran into the living room to find Primo holding the empty habitat, screaming, "WHERE IS ANTY?"

"Did you let him out? All of them?" I yelled back, scanning the floor for ants and spotting not a one, "I TOLD you not to!"

"But I wanted to PLAY WITH HIM!" he choked out before the bawling began, the wild, wide-eyed sobbing of a man with nothing left to lose, "ANTY! ANNNNNNNNTTTTY!"

Seconda, not quite sure what the hubbub was about, but always willing to join in on a good cry, piped up, "I WANT MY ANNNNNTY! GET HIM MOMMY!"

Primo thought this was an excellent idea. "Yes, Mommy, find him! Find Anty and his roommates, too!"

It is the lot of mothers to fix the unfixable, to do the impossible. But even we have limitations. I tried to explain that you'd have better luck keeping track of a collection of dust motes than ants on the loose. I told him it was his own fault for not listening to his mother. I told him you can't really play with an ant anyway. I suggested finding one of Anty's identical twin brothers on the stoop. There was no consoling him.

Since that fateful day, we have a strict all-bugs-left-behind policy. The kids can pick up whatever creepy crawlers they please - slugs, inchworms, millepieds, rolie polies - but they all get released back into the wild when its time to go home. And wouldn't you know, just yesterday, the wheel came full circle when Primo was poking through the dirt at his grandparents' place and found a small, sleek, black snail.

"Mommy, Mommy look!" he cried, breathless.

I had to admit, the snail was stupendous. She stuck her head with its lovely little snail horns right out in a delightfully amiable way and swayed her body this way and that, ever so slowly. I felt positively enchanted.

We named her Slimy Jr. and spent an hour or two in the garden playing with her. When it was time to go inside for lunch, I told Primo it would be OK if we kept Slimy, since she was such a special, such a one-of-a-kind snail.

"No, we better let her go free, Mommy," my son said, "So she can find her family and live a happy life in the dirt."

And that, I think, is precisely what happened.