PET PEEVE

The other day, my mom & I were watching ANIMAL PLANET when all of a sudden she started telling me that having a pet would definitely get rid of certain ennui that had crept in our house. She believed that spending some time with the pet, playing with it would act as a stress buster & would eventually help me concentrate on my studies.

Get a pet? Now? What am I, seven? Funny but when we were watching DISCOVERY the previous night, she never thought of buying the latest i-pod or the new XBOX-360 that was shown. Get a PET!!!!!

You see, I am not an animal person. Though Garfield, TOP CAT and SILVESTER are really cool cartoon characters, I hate cats. It is the second most selfish creature on earth…first being me offcourse. They like to be pampered only when they are in a mood to get mollycoddled. Worst thing about them is that they will damage your stuff and yet you can’t do anything about it since there is that innocence in their eyes. So getting a cat is totally out of question.

Next to a cat comes a dog. Personally, I have nothing against the dogs but I think they are stupid. If one dog barks, the others bark. If dogs were to talk and if you were to ask anyone of them on why he barked, you’d probably get a reply which goes, “I dunno! He started it. I merely followed.” And then if you were to ask the dog who started all this, his reply would be, “I dunno… I just felt like barking…because I can bark.” Not only this but this creature will chase anything that seems to travel faster than it even if it happens to be its tail. And all of a sudden, it will stop chasing whatever it is chasing because, “Ughh, I don’t know why I am chasing it in the first place.” SO DAMN STUPID!!!!

After cat and dog comes a fish. It is said that having a small aquarium in a house does improve your level of concentration. But having an aquarium is a high maintenance job. One has to feed the fish thrice a day, clean the tank twice a week and buy new ones once a month because they keep dying due to mysterious circumstances. Not my cup of tea.

So, an hour long discussion, the ‘pet’ issue stalemated. The next day I woke up only to find out that my granny was bitten by a RAT. That’s right, a rat. How he entered our house was not an issue, how to get rid of him ASAP was and I kid you not, this rat was one tough S.O.B.

That very night, my dad & I, with sticks in our hand, were all set to beat the shit out of him. We were able to trace down his route and apparently I was standing in his way. So, the rat went over my leg, my dad went to whack him & CRACK! I heard my toe-nail get shattered. Operation RAT-WHACK failed and the rat never took the same path again for his night-walk.

For the next two days, he was nowhere to be seen although he had eaten couple of potatoes…bits of em…maybe he didn’t like them…maybe they weren’t sweet enough for him. Maybe. By now, granny had harassed grandpa regarding this uninvited guest or rather this pet of ours and poor old gramps, with a cane in his hand, went about hitting everything in sight except the rat if at all he showed his face to us. A Broken lamp-post and a telephone later, even he gave up.

Meanwhile my dad was still fancying his chances and bought a mouse-trap. Fried fish, papad, cheese and potato chips were used to lure him and he managed to steal the bait, eat it & shit there but never get caught. Dad even bought MORE-TEEN, the fancy rat-kill medicine whose punch-line was “ONCE THEY EAT IT ZIP-ZAP-ZOOM, THE RAT WILL MEET ITS DOOM.”
Talk about show-boating man…our “pet” ate 3 whole packets of MORE-TEEN and all we saw the next morning was truck load of RAT POOP.

My advice to MORE-TEEN: - advertise your product as a LAXATIVE for RATS and NOT as a RAT-KILL medicine.

I bought rat poison from a roadside “RAT PIOSON” wala (no typo here) and he instructed me how to use it effectively. He also warned me to wash my hands with detergent since the acid used was pretty darn lethal. Ironically, while I was buying the poison, one exasperated man came there searching for poison which could kill a dog. Why? Coz a certain dog in his alley was multiplying at an alarming rate, was barking late nights right outside his house and for no reason kept chasing him when he rode on his bike. (see… I told you dogs are stupid).

Anyways, I would have loved to tell you happened next but the rat nibbled the wires of my PC. The cyber café owner is telling me that my 30 mins are up and I am supposed to be at bakwas’ place right now watching a movie called THE DEPARTED… and oh yes…the movie is also about a rat.

Peteboy