4 ~ Sunday, July 5, 1992 - North Shore News

Only 400 more turtle tank clean-ups to go

WHAT IS a pet, anyway?
At the very least, it is atest. |
was going to say trial, bul that’s a
given. Obviously, a pet will cause

you hassfes.

i will cost you moncy.

It will take up time galore, mosi
pets being as demanding as spoil-
ed children.

Yet we put ourselves through it,
don’t we? For all the noise,
throw-away money, interrupted
steep, clashes with the neighbors,
and just plain fretting, we con-
tinuc to have pets.

Not all of us, of course. And |
bow before those with the good
sense not to have pets. But they
are a minority, aren’s they?

Children are a big factor in the
having-of-pets. The turtles whose
35-gallon tank my wife spends
three hours every two weeks
Cleaning were bought at the height
of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur-
the mania.

The sweet little boy Mama
bought the turtles for now goes to
movies like Afien 3 and Patriot
Games. :

Ninja turtles? He’s 13, for
God's sake. His only purpose in
life now is to get a girlfriend.

Our daughter was a player in
the lithe psychodrama leading up
to the absurd decision to buy pet
turtles. She’s eight and very much
like her grandfather and mother:
the nice word is “‘determined.’*

She was determined to have a

WV

pet, you see. A pet dog, actually.

I could understand her feeling.
Most of her fife she'd had a huge
gentle St. Bernard named Keela as
a pet, but we'd moved from out
in the country to smack dab in the
middle of suburbia.

1 hadn't wanted to ruin Keela’s
final years by dragging her into
the city. She was 10 years old and
used to roaming the coniferous
forest on the slopes of Eagle
Mountain.

We left her behind, in good
care. But a few snonths later, she
died, Fell into a stream and
couldn’t climb out because of the
arthritis.

Keela’s death Seft us all shat-
tered. We still can hardly look at
old family videotapes where Keela
appears (and she’s in so many of
them) without one or the bunch of
us Starting to sniffle.

I didn’t want another dog. Not
in the city. It’s cruel, | argued.

Of course, I was totally ig-
nored, despite my official status
as Master of the Castle and Lord
of the Domestic Realm.

The purebred German Shepherd
pup that flopped out of the box
and promptly widdled on the rug
was named Belit, after the she-

pirate who pillaged the Black Sea ;

Coast alongside Conan the Bar-
darian back in the Hyborean Age.
‘She was either the friendliest
dog in the universe, or the most
neurotic. She was into licking you,

program receives

federal START grant

A RECENTLY announc-
ed START grant of
$27,220 from the federal
government has been
allotted to West ‘Van-
couver’s Youth Outreach
Program. The program
assists 1l- to {!8-year-
olds who are identified as
being ‘‘at risk’’ of leaving
- school early.
‘ “" think we can thank
{Capiiano-Howe Sound) MP
Mary Collins for assistance
with this,” said Ald. Pat
Boname when she told a recent
meeting of West Vancouver
Distzict Council about the
grant.

The work experience pro-

SCA
WEST VANCOUVER

DISTRICT COUNCIL

gram is designed to provide
young people with the
resources needed to make in-
formed decisions concerning
further education, skills, train-
ing and tabor market
preparedness.

Workshop activities will
focus on communication skills,
time and financial manage-
ment, labor market awareness,
employer expectations, goal
setting, problem solving and
job-search techniques. :

The grant has been increased
from last year’s amount to
allow youths in the 11 to 14
age bracket to participate.

. SPRINKLING BAN
DISTRICT OF WEST VANCOUVER

Due to the declining levels of water in both the Greater
Vancouver Water District's storage reservoirs and in West

Vancouver's Eagle Lake reservoir, there is

now a com-

plete ban on watering of lawns and grass areas, on the
hosing of driveways and sidewalks and the use of hoses
for car washing. Watering of flowers and vegetables by
hand or with hand held hoses only is permitted.

Permits will not be issued for watering of lawns laid or

seeded after July 3, 1992.

This ban will be enforced and residents disobeying it may
have their water supply turned off. Restoration of service
will be subject to a fee of $88.

District of West Vancouver

B.A. Lambert, P. Eng.
Director of Operations

‘Bob

Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

and if you didn’t like being licked
to death, she'd nuzzle you
endlessly.

Unfortunately, at the time my
wife was working, the kids were in
school and I was off hard on the
trail of news most of the time.

Poor party animal Belit wound
up having to spend her days alone
in the back yard, where she natu-
rally ruined the garden and Jawn
by digging and peeing and pocing,
and gnawed every single loose ob-
ject into a pulp, sort of like a
giant rat on amphetamines.

And she barked.

Luckily, | knew someone with a
handsome young male German
Shepherd named Apollo.

We introduced him to Belit at a
party at our place one night, and
they fell.in love. In a tremendous
happy ending, Belit moved in with
Apolio.

44 There were innuendos about tyranny, and
sly references to patriarchal imperialism within
the bosom of the nuclear family. 99

You should have heard the
whining from the kids, supported,
to my horror, by their mother.

To listen to my wife, you'd
think the kids were going to grow
up twisted because they didn’t
have a dog in the house, There
were innuendos about tyranny,
and sly references to patriarchal
imperialism within the bosom of
the nuclear farnily.

i stood firm, the grim but real-
istic father-figure and clan leader.
it was, as I say, the Teenage

Ninja Mutant Turtle cra. | come
home one day to find that the ~

kids are absolutely ecstatic
because Mom has brought home
two of the cutest-looking little
turtles, called Red Sliders. .

They don’t bark. They don’t
ruin the yard. They don’t shed all
over the house. You just clean this
little five-gallon glass tank out
every once in a while...

They don’t tell you at the pet
store that Red Sliders can grow to
be a couple of feet long, and
they’re going to survive at feast 17
years, even in captivity.

Nor do they mention that as the
turtles grow, they require larger
and larger tanks.

And as they grow, surprise,
surprise, they emit personal bio-
logical wastes and do all the other

«Full 12 year warranty
* Lifetime warranty on action and case
¢ Solid spruce soundboard (no plywood)

¢ Ail hardwood case (no chipboard)

* Al! rock maple action (no plastic)

stuff that doggies do, including
tearing up the oh-so-artistically-
arranged sea shells and coral and
fake plants, and trying to bite off
fingers.

LT admit they do not bark. This
is the one thing I will say for tur-
tles.

Now it could easily be argued
that | should help my wife in her
massive cleaning chore every two
weeks. In fact, I did once. Near
the end of the task, 1 was getting
kind of irritable, eh?

The way 1] look at it, the pur-
pose of having pets must be so
that we can get to know and love
creatures other than our own
kind, and at the same time learn
to shoulder responsibility.

I think I'm quoting froma
speech Mom was making to the
kids the day she brought the tur-
tles home to replace the dog.

Just this morning, as she was
finishing cleaning the tank for the
50th or 60th time (probably only
another 400 clean-ups to go be-
fore the turtles die, if my wife
doesn’t commit suicide first), I
found myself thinking about kar-
ma, and how ye reap what ye
sow, and all that stuff.

But of course I didn’t dare say
anything aloud.

“sat Lit
Edition