Yesterday, I went to the pet store looking for a turtle for Ari's birthday. That was a failed attempt. I discovered that it is illegal to sell small turtles in Indiana. They do sell large foreign turtles for 80 bucks. I didn’t think that would be a wise investment. Are turtles endangered species? It's just as well that I couldn’t buy one, because during my "turtles as pets" research on the net, i found some disturbing facts. One of which is that turtles are the third most common carrier of Salmonella!!! (doesn’t salmonella sound kind of like some sort of sea flora?) According to the info on the pages, turtles seem like they would thrive better, left alone in their natural habitat. I would have felt guilty keeping a growing turtle in a confined space. I would have felt even worse if Ari contracted salmonella.

So, I wanted to settle on a fish. My companion on this venture was Key. She urged me to buy something that Ari would be more excited about and could help take care of. After much tribulation I decided to check out the hamsters. I was never allowed to have a hamster so I was a bit intimidated by that idea (less so than the turtle, however). I had a rat, years ago but it was very tame. He was bred by someone that I sort of knew and very used to human contact. We perused the hamster aisle looking for a friendly looking one. There were these cute little black bear hamsters that resembled tiny little mousey-kitty cats on crack but they were too expensive. We spotted a very cute and fat little roly-poly hamster. She looked like a little chipmunk, down to the little markings. We decided that she would be a good choice and waited for the clerk to lure her out of the cage. As she reached for it, it turned into a feisty little monster and bit her hand. As if that behavior wasn’t dissuasive enough... It then took a stand by raising up on its hind legs and holding out it’s arms (do hamsters have arms?)and pushed the hamster that was standing next to it flat on it’s back! Now I understand why the hamster was so fat! She probably bullied the other hamsters and ate all of the food. Or maybe she ate all of the hamsters. Needless to say we did not get that flesh-eating monster. We decided on a smaller more demure hamster. Now I'm going to have to refrain from looking up how diseas-y hamsters can be. Ari was very pleased with my decision but was very disappointed when I would not let him sleep with her. We named her Turtle but Ari calls her Ratty.

Yesterday Ari asked me if we were chinese. I told him that we weren’t, he seemed happy with that answer but then he said “we would have to fly to get to China, right?” I answered yes. He then asked me if we were white, I said yes. He said “but we’ve eaten chinese, right?. I guess he was just clarifying. I’m hoping he doesn’t think we are cannibals.

His fifth birthday party is this weekend!

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