Healthcare for REAL Minority Pets

Gates by David Bonomo: Southern Florida
*
It is nighttime. Woody has been sleeping in the living room lately on an ultra soft green blanket that looks like baby fine grass and not with me. His arthritis has gotten much worse and he walks with a slight shimmy and has a hunch in his back.
SO I was delighted when I heard a “tap-tap-tap” next to my pillow that night. “Oh, goody! You’ve come to bed.” I whispered and flicked on the light.
Hm. No Woody. I could see him, sound asleep in the next room.
I turn to punch my pillow and splayed out in the center of it – where my head just was – is a prehistoric beetle the size of a small bird.
“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghghghaghghghghghghghaaaahghghghg!!!”
I am already out of bed in the split second it takes David to wake up.
“What the -?”
I am already pointing and doing a jig with my Scream face on but all that is coming out is some otherworldly screech.
“Jesus!” David yells, and lunges out of bed.
The jarring motion has awakened the Sleeping Giant and it scurries – toe tapping loud, this thing was so big!!! – off the bed and into the closet.
“Naaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsasysyaghgajh!”
In a heartbeat – mine had just resumed – David dove into the closet and shoes started flying and the laundry hamper and belts and –
“I need a paper- I need a shoe- I need a shovel! Get me a shovel!’
Yeah, right. Like I’m running into the garage in bare feet now.
I run into the kitchen – Woody gives me a shocked look as I dash past him – and grab a – ladle? – and come rushing back into the bedroom, only to hear David growling, “Die! Die! Die, you fucker!” and the slamming of a shoe – my Nikes! Oh, to hell with it, the arches suck anyway…. And then, then… it was all over.
“I need some paper towels in here!” David says as emerges from the closet, holding the sporty murder weapon, wiping sweat from his brow. “I don’t think you’ll want to wear these shoes anymore.”
“Fifteen years together and finally we can agree on something,” I say, winded, handing him an entire roll of paper towels.
“You got any rug cleaner? It’s a mess in here.”
Ew.
I peak into the murder scene, and Coroner Dave yells, “Don’t look!”
So I don’t.
*
It took me a full week to get a full night’s sleep again. Just long enough for the Palmetto Bugs on Steroids to let me get comfortable. And then, the morning came when I woke up to a sunny room shaded only by the…
…PALMETTO BUG SCURRYING ACROSS MY FACE!
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUIUIUFHGHJFGHUHNNJGHUNMNVJHUHMNNFJURINKDMFKLKAHHH!”
David comes running, pants at his knees, holding the newspaper he reads every morning on the crapper. “What?”
I am jigging again, shrieking in tongues. “Blahjhdjhdjfkjfkjjdkjkdjgkkkahhhhhhhhhghghghghghhhh!” I run my hands around my face. “---akjdkjdkjk ACROSS MY FACE AND AKDLSJFKHGJHGJHH ON MY PILLOW AGAIN AND MY FACEMY FACE!!!!“
“Shit.” He pulls up his pants and goes into the bedroom, traps the lobster in the shower drain and then you know what he said?
“Guess I should start shutting the bedroom window at night.”
“What.” My first English word of the day.
“The window. The screen is a little ripped and I guess the palmetto bugs are getting in that way.”

WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND OVER BUG DISPUTE
“He Tortured Me With Palmetto Bugs,” She Claims

(Couldn’t you picture it, though?)

Iguana!

There are Pet sitters in Hell
“IT’S OKAY, he won’t bite you,” Maryann, our neighbor says. David and I are standing in her small living room, watching her stroke the back of what looks to be a small stegosaurus, clinging to side of an enormous birdcage.
“Whoa,” David says. “Let me see.”
I take a step back. “I’ll watch.”
“Gila monster or iguana?’ Ranger Dave asks, as Maryann hands the reptile to David. His arm lurches under its weight. I take another step back.
“Iguana,” Maryann says smartly. Since she is a student at the North Carolina State Veterinary School, she knows the difference. Yay.
“So, I just need you to feed him twice a day all next week. I’ll be home Sunday, very early in the morning. You can leave him out of his cage. He likes to hang around up on the curtain rod.” She points to an iron ramp above the bay window. “Oh, and here’s his food,” she says, and holds up a bag of baby greens, the kind I pay 6.99 a pound for at Whole Foods.
“David? David. Maryann’s showing you his food.”
“Whoa! What’s this growth on his face?” David marvels and pivots around with Cyclops on his arm and all I see is a scaly golf ball protruding from the iguana’s face. It looks like a second, albeit smaller, head. I notice his ribs as he breathes, hard.
“Dude. That thing is huge!” David says, grimacing, and slowly pivots the double-headed creature back to Maryann’s arm.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Just a growth. I’m hoping it will eventually fall off,” she says brightly. I have edged back into the kitchen now.
“And do what with it? Play eighteen holes?’ David asks, wide-eyed.
“No, silly. Study it, probably,” Maryann says.
Oh, gross.
“Oh, yes, and one more thing. Dara, make sure you – “ she holds her hand to her mouth and whispers – “sorta stay away from him if it’s, like, you know, that time of the month. He gets a little… aggressive.”
“’kay!” I shriek, and smile, and hightail it to the door. “Ready David I’m gonna go?!”
David is in a genuflect/crouch, studying him. “Damn. Are you sure he’s okay?”
“He’s fine,” Maryann says. “See you in a week.”
*

HELL FREEZETH OVER
“The iguana doesn’t look so good,” David tells me, shaking his head. It is Day 2 of his Iguana Pet Sitting Service for Maryann.
“How can you tell?” I ask, making a face.
“Well, when I opened the door, he was sitting on the curtain rod, but then the wind blew the door shut and – Thmph! – he just fell to the floor.”
“Did he run away?’ I ask. The hair is standing up on the back of my neck just thinking about that thing running.
“I wish. He just stayed there.”
“Maybe you startled him. He probably can’t see around his second head.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “He won’t eat or drink anything. Watch him keel over.”
*
Lo and behold: the next day, he did.
“Shit!” David says. “The iguana’s dead.”
“Shit!” I agreed. “Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure. He’s stiff as a board.” And then: “I think I’ll run over him with my truck, just to be sure.”
“What?! You can’t run over someone’s pet with your truck!” I yell.
Woody trots out of the room.
“Sure I can. What if he’s suffering?”
“David. Maryann may want to see him, or bury him when she comes home. Plus, you’ll flatten that [I gag a little here] growth she wants to study.” Uck.
“Trash pickup is Friday. I was just gonna throw it out. Although, recycling is tomorrow….”
“You can’t recycle it! Or throw it out! Plus, that dinosaur will never fit in the recycling bin.”
“Well, I’ll figure something out,” he mutters pensively.

Less than an hour later he returns, looking relieved.
“What did you do?” I ask.
He beamed. “Froze ‘im!”
“You- what?”
“Froze. Him.”
“You stuck Maryann’s pet in the freezer.” Oh God. I whirl around to our freezer door.
“Not our freezer. Her freezer,” he says. “It’s in a bag.”
“Did you, uh, label it?”
“Hell, no! Believe me, it’s expired!”
“David.”
“What.”
“You must go over there the minute she gets home and tell her what happened.”
“No fucking way. She gets back at like, four in the morning. I’m not getting up that early.”
“Well, leave her a note then. What if she finds it?” I have visions of an early morning snack gone terribly, irreversibly wrong.
“That’s her problem,” he says. “She never should have left me in charge of Golf Ball Boy. He obviously was sick.”
“But… the freezer?”
“So he won’t stink,” he says.
“Oh.”
Maryann arrived home bright and early – and famished.
She never spoke to us again.
*

I make an appointment with a realtor to go browsing at houses back in peaceful, safe, pleasantly boring Cary. I find one on a quiet block, not far from our old house. I tell David about it and he says, “Oh, yeah, about that. “
Uh-oh.
“Remember that huge remodel and cabinet job I bid on in Key Biscayne?”
“Florida?”
“Duh! Yes, Florida!”
“What about it?”
“They accepted my offer.”
“And?”
He takes a breath. All at once he announces, “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Golden State!”
“We already lived there,” I say, meaning the Golden State of California. “Don’t you want to try somewhere new?” He can’t be serious.
“Okay, wait a minute,” he says, and leaves the room. I pick up Woody, who is suddenly shivering.
He reappears. “Bin it, Baby! We’re movin’ to the Sunshine State!”
He is holding up something: a check with a lot of zero’s on it. “Deposit it and weep. This is only their down payment.”
I look up close. “Wow.”
“An entire kitchen for the very rich and an entire remodel and bath for the even richer. And lots more to follow.“
Woody shivers again. My baby. My old baby. He’s cold.
“Why not?”

Health Scare

He ran up the full flight of stairs, like he does every day after our afternoon walk. That’s all. Just like every day.
Woody ran into my office to rug surf while I went into the kitchen to break a single Pupperoni treat into little pieces, just like he loves, like I do every day.
The sound I heard as I stood at the counter made my knees buckle: a high-pitched wailing. The agonized plea of a rabbit dying.
My Baby.
I ran down the hall and flew to my office floor where Woody lay, still, so still.
“No,no,no,no,no,noooooo….” I hunched over him, my hands shaking up and down so violently I was afraid if I touched him it would be a slap. I scooped him up supporting a rag doll dog head and pummeled down the stairs to David’s workshop.
“DAVID! DAVID!!!”
David stood at his saw table and half smiled and then his face fell. I lowered Woody onto the cool concrete floor of the shop and resumed my shaking hand tai chi movement over his lifeless little white body. “No, no, no, nooooooo!’ was all I could say and then David crouched down, too, and said, “Wake up, Little Buddy. C’mon, Dude, wake up.” And then to me: “Give him some air, you’re crowding him,” and I think I moved back a little bit and made my crazy hands fan him with air. I tried to stroke his head and his belly with my cold hands and my voice was some nervous breakdown Lady’s, shivering and rocket-pitched and all I could say was, “NOOooooooooo….”
“He’s coming to!” David yelled. And Woody woke up.
“Oh!Oh!Oh!” was all I could say, hands still flailing, afraid to pick him up, afraid to leave him there on the hard floor and certainly never, ever, able to let him go….

“His heart stopped,” the vet tells me.
I cannot stop petting him. “It’s called a syncopatic episode -” she said, searching for my eyes, which I can’t take off Woody, a silly half smile on my face. M’boy. He’s here. We still have time –
“- and there will be more of them. I’m putting him on heart medication, a third of a pill. He has to take this every day for the rest of his life.”
I am beaming, can’t stop petting him. He’s here. He’s alive. I – can’t.
“Dara, you must prepare yourself. This will happen again.” She looked at me and searched for my eyes some more, since I’ll admit, I am avoiding hers.
Finally I look at her, my eyes burning. “Thank you, “ I choked. “Thank you.”
*