Pet Problems

Last weekend the boys and I went to the Fiesta Ballona, a carnival in Culver City, with expensive rides run by grumpy people. We didn't stay long, 'cos the boys were in bad moods, but we did see the Spam Truck. I'm sure there's a joke about getting free Spam, or more Spam, or something, but I can't think of one that's not so obvious that it isn't funny.


Anyway, the boys wanted to have a go on a stall, most of which were extraordinarily expensive and probably brief. The one that wasn't was throwing ping-pong balls into glass jars, 'cos it was a dollar for 7 balls, and it's impossible to win, so we were safe. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible to win, Alex won a goldfish. Which is bad enough, 'cos we've supported the person at the fair who probably doesn't treat his goldfish as well as he might. Plus it means we've got a goldfish, but at least that meant we could leave the fair.

(We had spare ride tickets, so I tried to find an underprivileged looking child to give them to, but every child I saw who looked potentially underprivileged had a $20 free ride bracelet on. Eventually I gave them to an overprivileged looking child, who was just arriving).

So now we have a goldfish, called Cutefish by Alex, who gets naming privileges for winning it (because it's so cute, apparently). Except Daniel calls it Freddy the Fish, much to Alexs chagrin. (When I was young, we had chickens in the garden, and each child was allowed to name one. I name mine 'Zodiac', after the rusting and derelict Ford Zodiac parked at the end of the neighbour's garden, My ever loving sister's decided to call it Sadie, much to my chagrin. So maybe it's genetic).

I went to the pet shop to buy some goldfish food, where I found that goldfish are 25c each. That's about 13 pence in old money. So we somewhat overpaid for our goldfish, by a factor of about 4.

Anyway, pet trauma number two was that Karenzander the (male) rat had a lump growing on her side. So we took her to the vet, once we found a vet who had sufficient rat expertise. The vet diagnosed a case of 'lump on side' which needed to be sliced off, in an operation. So he was duly booked in to the vets, and had to be taken there at 7:15 on Friday morning, which seemed a little excessively early to me.

The logistics of the day were very complicated, Daniel had a friend around to visit, and Alex was at Ana's house, so the various children had to be taken/fetched, and then we had a vague plan to go out to the Souplantation, so we weren't quite sure how to fit all this in.

But we forgot! This is America! The vets open at 7:30 in the morning, and close at 9pm (on weekdays); 4:30 on Saturday, and 10-4 on Sunday). So we went out, and I went to collect the sick rat from the vets.

Karenzander is now back in the rat house, but we've divided into two so that he doesn't feel obliged to fight with Karen while he recuperates. We are supposed to wash the injury with a hot compress twice a day. That's going to prove an interesting challenge.

A new rat is considerably more expensive than a goldfish - I think they are about $4. So overpaying for the goldfish by a factor of 4 was nothing. It cost $39 to have the vet look at the lump, and tell us that it had a lump, and needed to be hacked out (we knew that), and $265 to actually hack out the lump.