{"id":896,"date":"2012-08-30T11:28:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-30T09:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2013-08-13T19:24:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T17:24:38","slug":"the-animals-of-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"The Animals of Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"african<\/a>I am dozing off in an armchair, the book overturned in my lap has provided a few minutes of entertainment but proves no match for sleep. I am in a house in the mountains of Colorado. In late July, the air is a cool, unusual, and totally agreeable, 75 \u00b0F. A light rain has begun pittering against the roof. I am, to be exact, in Heaven.<\/p>\n

A drop of pressure on my shoulder has drawn my attention from ecstasy, but not relinquishing so quickly, I go back to my summer fantasy of scratch-off lottery tickets and chocolate underwear. The pressure is more pronounced, and then my ear is wet. This rouses me.<\/p>\n

The dog, a Bluetick hound, is staring longingly into my eyes, his face is resting on my shoulder. And copious amounts of drool is attaching his droopy jowls to my ear.<\/p>\n

There is no term in the science of speed that can calculate how fast I leap from the chair drying my ear on my shirt. The dog smiles as I do this. Then he jumps in the seat, yawns\u00a0 and puts down his head for a nap filled with dreams of cats in trees and liver-flavored loin cloths.<\/p>\n

This is one of the animals of summer.<\/p>\n

Being a pet owner, I have always put myself on a pedestal above parents, and before you delete my name from the lists of possible Godfathers here’s why. Parents talk about their kids. A lot. Like, a whole lot. And now with Facebook, there is hardly a day without a picture of a naked baby, or a kid wearing a frog outfit or something else embarrassing that will surely be told to a therapist in about fifteen years. If you are in college now, become a family therapist, your services will be needed in the near future. This is not meant to be a complaint, I love my friends and I love my friends’ kids, and I love that my friends are proud of their kids.<\/p>\n

But let’s be honest, showing them off on Facebook is the modern way of saying “Oh, you think your<\/em> kid is smart, well mine has mastered the art of standing in front of a camera with pizza in his hand.”<\/p>\n

So, being a perfect hypocrite, I grumble about parents and yet constantly tell stories about my cat. Like many pet owners, I do not think that talking about my animal is the same as a parent talking about their kids.<\/p>\n

But, and this was made painfully clear to me this summer, it is.<\/p>\n

Just like any parent, I want to believe that my pet is the weirdest, funniest and most interesting animal on Earth. Again, wrong. On top of a chair stealing, drooling Bluetick, I met several animal with idiosyncrasies and unique personalities. I met a dog who drops saliva-covered tennis balls in your crotch, knowing you’d have to make the choice between playing with him for seven hours or leaving a saliva covered tennis ball in your crotch. There was a cat who avoided the other cat by taking to the sink and counter, like a bandit in the mountains. This is where the cat lived, ate, and pooped. In the sink and counter.<\/p>\n

There were others. I walked a dog who (every day) waited until we were surrounded by people to poop so that I would have to do the glory job in front of them. Then, as I gathered up her deposit in a plastic sandwich bag, she would kick it at me using her hindlegs. While I was mumbling through my smile, “I am going to kill you,” the others were surely thinking, “What a clever dog to get revenge on this bad fat man.” Not all fat people are bad, people.<\/p>\n

I have bored bar patrons in Langhorne, Prague, Chicago and Kansas City with stories about these pets. And my hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. I have talked about free range animals as well. I have talked about getting attacked by frogs on our trip. I have told dozens of people about a squirrel outside of Independence Hall that lay on the ground spread eagle begging for treats. Loons, ducks, partridges (of which I am an accidental murderer), horses, moose, eagles, deer and bats have starred in my tales like Greek heroes.<\/p>\n

One might expect a post like this to end with an apology and proclamation of change. But that’s not going to happen. As it turns out I am rather comfortable with this hypocrisy. Until I am dragged, kicking and screaming, into parenthood by prophylactic mismanagement or “love,” I will continue to embarrass the animal world with my stories.<\/p>\n

Maybe becoming a pet therapist in the future wouldn’t be a bad way to go…<\/p>\n

Make me feel better: How are you a hypocrite?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am dozing off in an armchair, the book overturned in my lap has provided a few minutes of entertainment but proves no match for sleep. I am in a house in the mountains of Colorado. In late July, the air is a cool, unusual, and totally agreeable, 75 \u00b0F. A light rain has begun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-es","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1602,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/1602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}