Meet Bud

I met a friend for lunch yesterday (if you want to make a beautiful life spend time with people you love). Over the course of our three hour meal (what? girls talk) the subject of abandoned pets came up. Neither of us understands the concept of abandoning a pet. She is the mother of a menagerie consisting of three dogs, three cats and two bunnies. It's like a Peaceable Kingdom in her house. I have Bud.

Bud is a yellow-bellied slider turtle, born in the state of Georgia. He was saved from being run over by a forklift when he was just a baby. He fit in the bottom of a styrofoam coffee cup. Don't freak out about the styrofoam - it was 1997 and it was small town Georgia. I know better now. Bud is now so big it takes two hands to hold him.


Bud traveled across the country from Savannah to Seattle in a bucket behind the driver's seat of a 16 foot Budget truck when I loaded the kids and all our belongings in the truck and moved back home after eight years in the South. He has adjusted well.

Domesticated turtles like Bud live around 30 to 35 years, which means for the next 20 years or so, after the kids move out on their own, it will be me and Bud. Suits me fine. He's a grand pet. The only worry I have is also the reason we don't have more pets, despite the wishes of both my kids and my daughter's daily perusal of Petfinders.com. If anything happens to Bud, I can't afford to take him to a veterinarian. I can just barely live with that. I could not live with that if we had a cat or dog in the house. It's bad enough not having health insurance at the moment to take care of my kids, and coming up with ways to take care of our health that don't cost a lot of money - it would be unconscionable to allow a pet to suffer. Yet people do it every day. I don't get it. I don't want to get it.

One of the most important ways to happily wield a dull knife and still carve out a beautiful life is to not live beyond your means. That means don't buy a house you can't afford in the long run. Definitely don't use credit cards. And don't take on the lifelong responsibility of pet ownership unless you have the means to take complete care of an animal. Forever.

Pets are like children that never grow up. I mean, look at Bud here. I don't want him to get into the bedrooms and hide under beds and in closets (we actually spend a good deal of time uttering the phrase "we lost Bud" and then looking for him. He likes nooks and crannies), so I erected a homemade turtle fence in the hallway. Some people have dog fences, some have child gates, we have a turtle fence. He has never convinced himself that he will never get over the fence and will make continual attempts until he ends up upside down on his shell waiting to be turned over so he can try it again. You have to admire his perseverance. Although he's too busy being mad about being denied access to someplace he wants to go to notice your admiration. Closed doors really infuriate him. I'm not kidding. You wouldn't believe the damage a turtle can do scratching at a closed door. I wouldn't have it any other way.

By the way, that "turtle fence" is just two pieces of wood that used to be slats on a bed frame that someone gave me for free many years ago. This is why I don't like throwing things away. Talk about an unexpected new life for an old object. And it didn't cost me a thing.