Lok-Town, Coming To Town

Loki, the Corgi. he's a perfectly sweet four-legger. but some might say animals are a human indulgence,and they would say so frowning on you for taking the lil' guy out for a walk at 7:00 am, when he seems to demand it, and petting the shit out of him becaue he's so gall-derned friendly, and has such a soft coat. it's not the way, the Buddhist might enchime, for lo these long years, you may find yourself reincarnated as a housepet, and then, what then? tricks? being struck and killed by a passing rickshaw? a life of mundane amusements punctuated by routine bouts with the masters of the house, who knock you repeatedly across the face with yellowed newspapers?

i don't believe that being a pet is a bad existence. for one thing, you are immortalized by the thinking, feeling entities known as the little girl who buys crickets from the petstore so that you, oh ugly lizard, may take your pick as to which furry legged exoskeleton shall be first down your gullet. my sister has always cherished her pets. in addition to the lizard, a skink, i think, she once tried to carry a French snail all the way back to the States in a custom-outfitted shoebox. it was the most intense part of a four week European vacation, my mother and sister with friends of the family; and it was the Dad who ultimately discovered the coverup, around when the stewardesses were distributing customs forms throughout the 747, which was by that time hurtling past Iceland. These forms queried the innocent travelers about carrying with them certain live objects like plants or (gasp) animals as they prepared to reenter the belly of the beast. My mother was sympathetic but could not bring herself to lie on those forms, and therefore, my sister's friend's dad made them march forward to the lavatory, where he had them dump the contents of their respective shoebox-snail habitats, along with the snails, into the toilet. the subsequent flushing was a perfunctory end to two weeks of joy and secrecy among the two young girls. to this day, all those that hear the tale are comforted by the idea that the two wayward snails, Slimey and Slimer, as they came to be called, who survived two weeks on the road, traveling through France in shoeboxes, with an unmistakable aplomb, if my sister is to be believed, these two crustaceans may have hit open water and lived on, successfully reacclimating to the rigours of life in the wild, and, in the end, little the worse for wear. humans suck, i guess. i like Loki though. he's pretty cute.