Prompt #94: Animal Encounters

Writing Exercise, October 2023

Hi Friends,

I’ve always loved animals of all kinds. When I was little, I was so desperate for pets, I collected insects, especially roly-poly bugs, which aren’t bugs at all but a terrestrial crustacean in the woodlice family. I built terrariums in shoe boxes and shoved them under my bed, so my mom wouldn’t find them. But the bugs just rolled up when I tried to interact with them, so that’s when the begging for real pets started. We lived in a tiny two-bedroom apartment, but I didn’t see what that had to do with keeping pets. First I begged for an ant farm, and to my surprise, my parents bought me one. Have you ever sat and watched ants moving things? No one works harder than an ant, except maybe a bee.

But ants aren’t all that cuddly, so I kept asking for bigger creatures: goldfish, rats, parakeets, a guinea pig, a cat, and eventually I got what I had always wanted—

—a dog. I had wanted a Golden Retriever, but with no space nor yard to speak of, my parents finally conceded to a ratty-looking terrier mix, who I named Benji, after the movie star, of course.

A “roly-poly bug” doing its thing

When I think about why my parents might have given into me in regards to all those pets, here’s what I’ve come up with: my mother grew up very poor in the north of England, and her mother cooked her pets—a rabbit and a chicken (named Peter and