For many years Camera Girl has been legendary among her friends and family for keeping an actual menagerie of varied pets.\u00a0 She has kept insects, arachnids, crustaceans, mollusks, worms, marine invertebrates, salt and fresh water fish, frogs and toads, salamanders, various lizards, snakes, turtles (mostly tortoises), parakeets, canaries, finches, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and decades of dogs (everything from Newfoundlands and basset hounds to miniature long haired dachshunds and German short haired pointers).\u00a0 She even has adopted some local wild life having become a close friend to a crow pair (Moe and Flo), an acquaintance of a raven pair (Poe and Mrs. Poe) and a witness to the frightening visitations of a pair of hawks that habitually pick off the less cautious mourning doves at Camera Girl\u2019s feeders.\u00a0 So, it goes without saying that she\u2019s no amateur at keeping critters.<\/p>\n
This week it was decided that in deference to Princess Sack of Potatoes\u2019 summer sleep over schedule, her request to add a hamster to the local zoo would be granted.\u00a0 Now why the present rodent in resident (guinea pig Laylee) isn\u2019t sufficient representation for that phylogenetic order (Rodentia) in the house I could not say.\u00a0 But youth must be served so we headed off into the rain today to bring home a handleable (and cute) representative of Mesocricetus auratus also known as the Syrian hamster who will forthwith be known as \u201cChucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
And we were successful in finding Chucky and establishing her bona fides vis-\u00e0-vis \u201cnipping\u201d and were requesting the sales help to package Chucky for the trip home when a catch appeared.\u00a0 We were asked to provide \u201cproof of enclosure.\u201d\u00a0 Now this is a New England thing.\u00a0 The states here are more concerned with the rights and privileges of hamsters than they are with the rights of people.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not even close.\u00a0 So, what these two young people wanted was a photo on a phone showing the cage that Chucky would inhabit when we got her home.\u00a0 Now Camera Girl and I both travel through life \u201csans phone.\u201d\u00a0 Other than a land line back at the Compound we are solely connected to the world around us through sounds produced by our mouths without any electronic amplification.\u00a0 So, no phone, no pictures of a hamster cage.<\/p>\n
This floored the young sales staff.\u00a0 They said it was forbidden to send out a hamster without proof of enclosure!\u00a0 I thought this was hilarious but Camera Girl was incensed.\u00a0 Basically, they were accusing her of not knowing how to keep a hamster which from her point of view was a deadly insult.\u00a0 She began describing in gory detail the dietary, housing and psychological regimen for hamsters that she had learned over the years.\u00a0 She demanded to speak to the manager and know why this requirement had not been communicated over the phone when she had called earlier to find a hamster at the store.\u00a0 The young sales staff were noticeably chastened and retreated to the manager\u2019s office for more instruction.\u00a0 And of course, the manager used discretion noting that the \u201cproof of enclosure\u201d was understood to be a way of ensuring that novice keepers didn\u2019t get home with their pets and promptly lose them because of inadequate housing.\u00a0 And of course, Chucky was promptly packaged and purchased and headed home with us.<\/p>\n
But on the way home I quickly adapted the scenario into a variant of the Seinfeld episode \u201cSoup Nazi.\u201d\u00a0 In my version it became \u201cPet Nazi\u201d with a short mustached tyrant in a Pet Smart uniform shouting to customers who wanted to buy hamsters without cage photos, \u201cNo hamster for you!\u00a0 Next!!!!<\/p>\n
And this was a comical event but just multiply this aspect of life by a thousand and you get an idea of the suffocating nature of life in the nanny states of New England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For many years Camera Girl has been legendary among her friends and family for keeping an actual menagerie of varied pets.\u00a0 She has kept insects,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3366,1263],"tags":[300,168,2534,384],"class_list":["post-37251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-life-in-dunwich","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-camera-girl","tag-humor","tag-new-england-idiots","tag-pets"],"yoast_head":"\n