Prologue / The Pet Saga

In the beginning...

I was born on a cool day in November of 1983 to a loving mother, an alcoholic father and a sister who quite literally cried when she found out I was a boy. She's 7 years older than me and she's always been quite the adversary. Growing up, she often went totally ape-shit trying to get attention, often doing terribly in school. This drove my mom crazy, and more often than not, fighting and arguing were commonplace. And being that I didn't want to get into any of this drama, I kept to myself and tried my best in school, I'm certain developing some kind of perfect child complex. And I think all this has led to the peculiar lifestyle that I lead now.

So let's start with the beginning and my earliest memories. My family lived in, and my mother and father still currently reside in, an old cajun home that is about 120 years old and somehow managing to stay intact. I keep waiting to hear that some kind of strange rube goldberg situation happened involving a raccoon, a shopping cart and a bag of marbles, and my mom will call me saying, "I'm not sure what happened, but there was a raccoon, and I heard a noise, I heard marbles and rickety metal, and now our house is gone." And I'll have to inquire, and the story that will follow would be unbelievable to anyone who didn't know my family. Some people might find a raccoon odd and out of place, but growing up in the deep south, we had our share of exotic/totally wild pets. I have had everything from flying squirrels to turtles, rabbits and chickens. At one point my family had a bluejay named Pete that met an untimely demise in the toilet. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I think it involved a door being left open and the toilet seat being left up. This combined with a heavy toilet seat and a bird flapping erratically, made for a blunt porcelain guillotine type action.  It's a visual only possible to obtain from my household, and for this and other bizarre happenings, I am forever grateful.  

As a child these animals are fun and interesting, but as a young adult, they just got annoying. I'm not referring to the normal cats & dogs that paraded around my house, but the animals that should be outside, but were in our bathroom. My dad had this habit of putting baby pigeons on the bathroom counter in just an old cardboard box. This seems annoying enough, but compile this with the fact that this was the only bathroom in our house. And upon entering the bathroom at any slight noise, these birds would give off shrill screams and began flightless clumsy flapping. This in turn would send birdseed shrapnel and tiny feathers air-born. Imagine trying to brush your teeth at 6:45 in the morning with this going on 2 feet away. This would go on until I just couldn't take it anymore and would scribe out an eviction notice, carefully taping it to the formentioned animal's box. I did this in the hopes that when I got home from school, this little tyrant might be moved, and luckily, by evening, the pigeon had found a new residence. You might see this as a progressive movement, until you would notice that it's new home was the kitchen counter, or perhaps even the kitchen table. And all a person could do in this situation is view this scenario with disbelief and relinquish a sigh that just says...."....fuck...".