Guess!

What are your favorite animals?

Cats obviously, but in truth I love most animals in the appropriate setting.

For example Lions and Tigers at a safe distance, yes, chasing me, definitely not.

Elephants yes, sitting on my lap for cuddles would be delightful but no.

Sharks are a no, too many teeth and very bad social manners. Eating your lunch date is not nice!

Snakes are allegedly nice but preferably with ten layers of bomb proof glass between us and viewed through a telescope strong enough to see up the nose of a Martian!

If it has more than two legs I am not fond. Spiders are the equivalent of a dark chocolate covered grenade. One glance s it rolls across the floor towards me and I will leave by the nearest window in the requisite 3 seconds.

I’m okay with worms, although I wasn’t when I was young and once hit a worm on the head with a hammer, okay I missed but I still feel guilty.

I did try with spiders too. We had one hiding under our fire years ago, and every night she would pop out, study us for a while, then disappear back underneath.

I decided I would be a grown up, so I named her Bettina; she felt like a girl and a Bettina. We got on very well until she rather rudely overstepped the mark.

We came in one evening, I switched the light on in the lounge, and there she was, clinging to a house brick on the fireplace. It wasn’t so much that she had ventured further out, that I could have coped with. It was that Miss Bettina was the length of the house brick!

I called Tony and told him she was ready to leave home. He replied that he would get a glass (we don’t kill them), I told him to bring a beer glass.

So leave home she did and then I worried that she was cold. I still feel bad about that too.

Yep cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, gerbils, budgerigars. Love ‘em all. But nothing that can eat you, scare you, strangle you, squash you, or run faster than you. Certainly nothing with a million teeth and an uncontrolled biting problem. Certainly nothing that can tell on you. You can’t trust a parrot to keep a secret!

Hope you’ve smiled.

Best love

Amorah – Deb