Things That Made Your Day

[pitbulllady]

Originally Posted by Sparky

I don't know if this exactly "made my day" but it was kind of cool...

Okay first off, I have this habit that's going to get my ass kicked some day: I treat kids like intelligent human beings. I talk to them the same way I talk to adults. I don't mean, like, babies or toddlers of course, but older kids. And what I mean about it possibly getting me in trouble some day is, if a kid is rude to me I snap at them the same way I'd snap at an adult - NOBODY gets away with being rude to me if I can do anything about it. And my gut reaction to being kicked or insulted is to confront the person, even if it's a kid, and even if their parents are right there.

So today in the pet store I was waiting to get some crickets for my tarantulas (they are HUNGRY after our vacation) and there was a young girl there with her mom also getting crickets. She asked me what I was getting crix for and I said tarantulas and she was all "EWWW, how can you have TARANTULAS??"

I never let anyone get away with that. I let her know in no uncertain terms that it is NOT acceptable, ever, to insult someone's pets like that. You don't have to like my pets, but if you insult them or me for having them I'm not going to meekly bow my head or whatever. Just because they're not fluffy bunnies they and I don't deserve to be insulted. Anyways she said nothing, and neither did her mom.

Later when GM and I were playing with the birds she came over (I don't know if it was on her own or her mom told her to) and she apologised. She said she has rats and that happens to her too, and yes it's rude. That was just kinda cool, nobody (kid or adult) ever apologises to me for insulting my tarantulas. I still feel bad for snapping at her, as I usually do when I have tell a kid off (it's not like she was *really* rude, it's just I'm tired of hearing "ew gross what's wrong with you for having spiders??").

YOU GO, GIRL!! I HATE it, with a passion, if someone disses MY choice of pets, whether it's snakes, or tarantulas, or Pit Bulls, based on their ignorance/stupidity. I too, deal with kids as if they were adults; the way I see it, if they want to try to act like they're all grown-up, they need to be prepared for real adults to TREAT them like they are, and that means taking off the kid gloves. At least this kid did have the intelligence to realize that SHE was potentially in the same proverbial boat as you are; many, many people despise rats, and are even terrified of them, mainly because they think that rats are all nasty, filthy, vicious creatures that only live in the sewers and other dark, scary places.

I got my eyes opened, so to speak, back when I was in college, and I had ferrets. Ferrets were my real passion, in spite of the fact that there was a lot of controversy around them. Many places still classified, and banned, ferrets are "wild animals", which they aren't. There were many lurid newspaper headlines of ferrets attacking and mauling infants and this was used as fuel for the "ban wagon". Most people weren't familiar with ferrets, since they weren't that popular or well-known back then, and all people knew was what they read in the newspapers and what the politicians told them. This was about the time that Rottweilers were getting a really bad rep, and every thug and biker and redneck HAD to have one. At a pet show, I encountered an older woman, who had a Rottweiler(an AKC show champion, it turned out, and the lady herself was a dog show judge). I had two of my ferrets to enter in a costume competition. As we were watching another entry, the dog got close to me, and I backed away and asked the woman to please control her dog. She asked me if I was afraid of dogs, and I told her "no, I'm not afraid of dogs...just THOSE dogs. I've heard too many bad things about them!" She responded by looking at my ferrets, held tightly to my chest lest they be eaten by that black-and-tan monster, and said, "You have ferrets. Don't they attack babies and suck their blood? That's what I've heard about THEM!" Her point was well-taken, and I realized that all of us animal owners, especially those who CHOOSE to have animals that might be scary, or gross, or strange to people who only know of what they've "heard," usually through questionable sources, about those animals, were in the same boat. I had no more right to judge HER dog or choice of dog than she had to judge MY ferrets, and both of us were basing our opinions on heresay-stuff that was largely the concoction of the "if it bleeds, it leads" media. At least that little girl in the pet shop got that education early, and was mature enough to deal with it. Bravo for you, and bravo for her, and bravo for her MOM for letting her kid take her lumps instead of trying to coddle her and take up for her, as most parents would have done.

pitbulllady