8/31/2008

Lee Household Pet Cemetary: 24w780 Sierra Ln

The Lee household has never had much luck with pets.........or is it that pets never had much luck with the Lee household? Whateves......anyway it never turns out well for any of them. And I'd like to think that they all lived happy lives until they died peacefully in their sleep, however, that would be a complete lie. All right, lets start at the beginning.

#1: I got a hamster in the second grade. I named him Billy Lee. We had such a great time together and I was so happy cause it was my first pet. I kept him in a cage with a cover and a hamster water bottle that hung down from the top of the cage. Well, one night I kissed Billy to sleep and fell asleep myself. I woke up in the morning to discover Billy was not there. I wondered where he could have gone and realized the cover of the cage was missing. I searched and searched for 5 days and could not find him anywhere. I was extremely sad. On day 7 of the dissapearance, Lily (my mother) tells me to come down to the basement. I go down and she is holding some mutated extremely large rat in her hand. She then tells me it's Billy and he drowned in the sump pump of our basement and the water filled his lungs and body to the size of a woman's softball. That was crazy!!!!!!

#2: Many years went by and in high school I was finally over the dramatic death of Billy. I got fascinated with fish so I decided to start my aquarium. This could have been right after I saw Duece Bigalow Male Gigalo. Anyways I wanted a fish that would eat other fish cause that is just flat out cool. I had heard of "Oscar fish" and that they would even jump out of the water and eat the food from your fingers. So, I filled my aquirium with water, checked the ph and went with Jeff to the pet store to buy me some Oscar fish. (Tell Jeff to post the PH story at the pet store, he tells it better). I first got some regular goldfish and Irridescent sharks, but they all died due to some falty PH numbers. Once the ph level was good I got 2 oscar fish and they were awesome. They ate minnows and little pellets from your fingers. But, I had a friend who worked at the local pet store on Ogden Ave. and he told me about the King of Kings of fish. The ever so wonderful SNAKEHEAD. He hooked me up with the snakehead for free. Now, the oscar fish were medium in size now and the baby snakehead was only about an inch long so I thought it to be ok for them to be in the same tank together. It worked out fine in the beginning. All three were eating little minnows and doing great, until one day I looked at the tank and the snakehead was literally 6 inches long and bit off a chunk of the lower body of one of the oscar fish. Well, the oscar died and 2 days later the other oscar fish died due to a viscous bite to the head. So long, my 2 Oscars.......so long......

#3: The snakehead was friggin' awesome man!!!!!! I would go shop and buy a dozen large goldfish and he would fit 8 into his mouth and his mouth got huge like a balloon. It was so fun to watch........what was not fun to watch was my wallet becoming smaller cause the price of goldfish was $2.47 for a dozen and the snakehead had become over 12 inches. It could eat 2 dozen goldfish a day, so I became creative and decided to go fishing at the local pond to catch some small blue gills. It worked great!!! If the blue gill was small enough snakehead could fit all of it into his mouth, but if it was too big it would catch it in it's mouth and thrash around until the body was bitten in half. I once caught a small catfish and put it in and it ripped its guts in half and I had to clean the tank with intestines and guts floating all around. Snakehead became so scary I didn't even want to clean the cage in fear of my hand. We even had a Main Event showdown: SNAKEHEAD VS. BULLFROG....Everyone was there and I was hyping up the crowd only to get boo's when snakehead didn't eat the bullfrog...... Anyways.......snakehead got so big and crazy that it attempted to commit suicide by jumping out of the tank........I jumped out once and I got a call from May and Mike going hysterical about coming home and seeing snakehead on the carpet......They said they didn't know what to do. what??????? (You put him back in the tank!!!!!!!!!) Well, they did and he was alive.....but still crazy cause he jumped out again and this time he succeeded. He died on the carpet. I was out of town and Lily calls me and says snakehead is dead, i said put him in a bag and put him in the freezer cause i want to taxidermy that sucker. That idea went as far as when i checked the prices for taxidermy an animal. It was about $100 dollars for an inch....that was no longer an option. Goodbye, my friend, snakehead.

#4: Lily got a cockatiel free from a friend. She named him Elvis for some reason. Jerry and her loved that bird. Jerry loved Elvis so much he would let him sit on his shoulder and crap on him all night long as he watched Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on tv. After one show of Millionaire Jerry would have bird poo on his shoulders, hands, pants, and mustache. I mean the bird was cool with me, it would fly around and make chirping sounds. All was good. Elvis seemed to be enjoing his life. We kept him downstairs in our living room. Now to explain Lily. She is a money saving hard headed woman. Who likes only to turn on the heat or a/c when someone is about to die. Well in the winter she has the heat on but only to about 60 degrees + with our old house the temperature inside is really about 48 degrees. Literally sleeping downstairs I wear a shirt, a sweater, a hoody, then sometimes a jacket with 2 blankets which I wrap myself in like a hotdog and I am still shivering in the morning when i wake up. So one morning i woke up extremely cold and go out my room and go to the bathroom. I get out and I was going to go and feed Elvis which I sometimes do. Usually Elvis is sitting on the stick in the cage chirping. However, this morning he was not. I walk over and I see something on the bottom of the cage. It was Elvis frozen with a clean set of frost on him just like cool mornings on the grass outside. And 2 small icicles hanging from his nostrils. Elvis froze to death, but it was a very funny sight....RIP: Elvis.

#5: Ellie-Cat Ellie-cat what are they feeding you. I got Ellie-cat in college from a friend who didn't want him/her anymore. To this day I still do not know for sure if it was a boy or a girl and the rest of the family didn't know either. I don't think anybody cared. Anyways, it was very cute as a puppy and i had so much fun with (it), but then i soon outgrew a cat and gave it to Jerry and Lily so they could take care of it. For real tho, Ellie-cat was strong, brave, and a real fighter. Michael would play catch with it by himself and throw him as high as the ceiling to see if it could land on its feet. Sometimes it did and sometimes it did not. Okay, okay, i did it too. but for real, it was fun..... Now, i have to explain that our family did not go to the doctor's office that often growing up. Only for physicals, torn ligaments, the occasional shingles (after it was too late), etc. So when I asked Lily if she would take Ellie to the vet if she had problems what did she say? "Oh yea, of course, If Ellie is sick I will definitely take it to the doctors." So, when Ellie-Cat got a bad eye infection that would produce puss-like substances what did Lily say? "What, that's nothing, all cats have that." And when Ellie-cat would throw up everyday on the carpet what did Jerry say? "Oh, that's nothing.....It's just a hairball, all cats get that" No Jerry, a hairball is not vomit.... And when Ellie-cat's hair started to clump together all over what did they do? They just cut the hair that was clumped together so Ellie would have bald spots on her. I found out recently that Ellie-cat was put into a shelter, which means as of now Ellie-cat is in cat heaven........Cheers to you Ellie-Cat..........you are my hero.....

Many of you might be thinking that it was all might fault since most of these animals were my pet, but people this is just mere coincidence. I blame Sierra Lane for these incidents..........

ANYWAYS......onto bigger pet news. Saki and I got 2 new puppies. I've always wanted a dog especially an English bulldog, so I decided to get one in Taiwan. However, i did research and an english bulldog has many health problems and other bad qualities so I decided on a french bulldog instead. Still very cute, but less of the problems. I got a girl frenchie and named her Sierra Lee to try and stop the pet curse. Saki got a boy teddy poodle named Pun (aka. Punky).......

6 comments:

Jeff said...

HAHAHA.

This is the pH story:

One Sunday afternoon, Robert decided he as going to construct the world's deadliest aquarium. We talked endlessly about the various grudge-matches he would host in his mother's living room. We tested the pH level of his tank before going to the pet store. It registered at about a Six.

We're like, "cool", let's go get some deadly fish. We get to the pet store and there's this seriously squirrely-looking dude who's grabbing fish for people. You could tell he was the type of the dude that had posters of fish in the room he rents from his parents house. I forget what kind of fish Robot picked out that day, but what happened next I will never forget.

As the guy is holding up the plastic bagful of water and fish, we casually ask him about pH levels. This is what he says:

"Oh, anywhere between 1.3 or 1.4 is ok. MAAAAAAYYBBE, just MAYBE 1.5. Why? What's your at?"

Robert and look at each other and then back at the dude and I reply:

"Six."

I swear, the plastic bag in the guy's hand trembled for a split second and his eyes went WIDE. He look squarely into the fish's eyes and we're pretty sure he whispered the words, "I'm sorry" to the fish.

What a crazy guy.

May Yang-Lee Photography said...

the saddest sorry is the bird. it died of the sheer cold of the lee house. so sad.

Unknown said...

OMG....Rob, I have not laughed so hard in I don't know how long. RIP Lee animals. LMAO!!!

Ashley said...

I seriously laughed for like 10 minutes while reading this, the funniest thing is that Chris had a hampster when he was younger that committed suicide in the sump pump as well...must be a hampster thing....update more often, i need the laughs!

Unknown said...

I have a hamster tragedy as well, mine hat a water dish. I had just cleaned the cage went to eat dinner and came back, the hamster had curled up in the water dish and drowned :( I also had a newt named dude prior to the hamster which took me a while to get over because it starved itself and died. I don't think it is us at all. Bailey has survived, but maybe because she is not under my primary care. I feel your pain and the difficulty of moving on to the next pet. I would like one for the classroom, but I can't bare the news if I have another suicidal pet, lol. Come home!!

Ryan said...

Why am i not even mentioned in your whole website man, c'mon, you could at least put i caught a bunch of those bluegills for you snake head.

Great writing by the way, very funny!!!