Pets and Animals

I love animals, I always have. When I am at work I can get a call about a child on a bicycle getting hit by a car and it doesn't even faze me. If I get a call about a cat that has been hit and injured it makes my stomach clench and my heart hurt.

I have 3 birds, an orange winged amazon (Ollie), a timneh african grey (Sammy) and a cockatiel Wicket. I also have a cat named Murphy and a tankful of fish. I have had Ollie for about 25 years. I have recently acquired another pet of sorts - an ant. A few years ago I bought an ant farm. I had wanted one since I was a kid so when I saw one in a magazine I couldn't resist. Ants came with it and I loved watching them build their tunnels. When the original batch of ants died I collected ants in the desert for a couple more years. It always made me sad that they died within about 3 weeks and I finally put the ant farm away. About a month ago I noticed an ant crawling on my bathroom wall. I decided it wasn't hurting anything so I would just let it stay and see how long it would hang around. A couple of weeks ago I remembered I had some ant food that had come with the ant farm so I started putting a bit of the food on the little ledge of the toothbrush holder. I was so excited the day I noticed all the food was gone. I have seen as many as 3 ants on the wall but there is almost always at least one. Of course, I have no way of knowing if it is the same ant each day or not but I like to think it is. I wonder about where it is getting water, I have yet to figure out a way to get water to it. Maybe it gets enough from the air.

OK, now you are beginning to see how strange I really am. More about my other pets later.