Earlier this week Granddaughter Number One phoned me, almost incoherent with grief. She needed someone to talk to: her last remaining pet rat had fallen from his cage onto the floor and broken his neck. I was very diplomatic, reminding her that she knew he was old (for a rat) and on his last legs, and making all the right sympathetic noises. Yes, she knew he was not long for this world - for his cage (?) - but it was the rather dramatic nature of his death that had shocked her. If he had quietly passed away in his sleep she would still have been upset but not so violently, incoherently, so.
I didn’t suggest that maybe if she had not gone to take him from his cage during her lunch break, he probably would not have fallen. Nor did I say that her living room would be more spacious (with the large cage that originally house 4 rats removed) and, more important in my opinion, less smelly. For rats do smell! No, they stink! Even if you clean their cage very frequently.
Her mother and I have persuaded her (ie put quite a lot of pressure on) not to buy more pet rats. But she is a grown-up person now! A grown-up person who gets very upset about things.
So, yes, I was diplomatic but in the final analysis, it was only a rat!
In this an article I read recently someone called Ellie Violet Bramley looks at the question of whether we should give up having pets. She tells us:
“Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist and the author of Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pet, says: “We’re at a really weird place, and definitely a place that is unlike any we’ve been in the past.” She cites a new report on the pet industry in the US that puts the figure of US households with pets at 70%: “That’s unbelievable!””
I don’t know the figures for the UK but anecdotally I know that rather a lot of people people bought pets during the Covid lockdown, especially dogs, apparently so they could take them for walks. As if it’s not possible to go for a walk without a dog!! I do it all the time, quite often on my own.
Ellen Violet went on:
“It isn’t just the scale of pet ownership that has mushroomed in recent years, Pierce says, but also what she describes as the “intensity” of pet ownership: “They are much more intensively captive than they have been in the past.” She takes the example of dogs, which, in general, “have less and less freedom to move around the world and be dogs”.”
Does she want us, I wonder, to go back to the situation that existed when I was a child and there were people who fed their dogs in the morning and then went off to work, leaving the dog to roam the streets all day, trained to return home in the late afternoon or early evening! Not that all dog-owners did this but there were enough stray dogs to sometimes make our streets a frightening place for a child to be out and about in!
One problem for pet-owners, it seems, is that their pets get bored - an even bigger problem now that some owners have returned to work in the office, leaving the pet alone. One person declared (ie complained ) that their African grey parrot demands a lot of attention. And my mind went back to a recent visit to Whipsnade zoo where we saw a display of birds - hawks, hunting birds and brightly coloured parrots. The trainer talking us through the display said that African grey parrots are now endangered because of people wanting them as pets! There you go - you shouldn’t have African grey parrots as pets!
From the article I followed a link to something by Dr Helen Scales (appropriately named) on the subject of fish getting bored in their fishtanks:
“We know that the nature of a fish’s tank will have an influence on its brain and behaviour. When young trout are reared in a boring, featureless tank they develop a smaller cerebellum (part of the brain that regulates movement) than trout that are given rocks and plants to explore. Cod reared in similarly enriched tanks become better at learning how to catch prey, and also recover quicker from stress after a simulated predator attack.
But whether fish actually feel bored in a way we can relate to is harder to work out. Fish-keepers sometimes see their pets ‘glass surfing’ – swimming repeatedly up and down the glass of the tank. This could be the aquatic equivalent of the pacing of a captive tiger that’s bored from a lack of stimulation. But the fish could also be stressed from an overcrowded or unfamiliar tank.”
That’s too much for me! I cannot start worrying about the fish in the pond outside the pub next door possibly being stressed or bored as they swim to and fro!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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