Jul
16
2008
At first, my wife refused point-blank, but the children were so persistent, she finally agreed on a compromise. “OK,” she said, “I’m not promising anything, but we’ll just pop into the local pet shop and have a look.”
Silly girl.
When I got home that evening I was greeted by two ecstatic daughters, a hamster called Hamlet, a blue and white budgie called Timmy — and a look from my wife that warned me to keep quiet and say nothing. Continue Reading »
Jul
16
2008
They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I doubt if our eightyear-old daughter Kendall would agree with that particular piece of traditional wisdom.
This is because, when it comes to the care and feeding — and keeping — of pet cage birds, our middle daughter is about as successful as her mother used to be when she was a child.
You may recall previous accounts of my wife’s youthful experiences with pets: most notably cage birds and fish. She had dozens of them at varying stages of her childhood. And all of them went the same way — slain in their millions by my wife. Not through malice, I hasten to add, but simply through too much kindess, too much handling and far too much food. At one stage, my wife’s kill-rate of aquarium fish was so great she was supporting the country’s fishing industry all by herself. Continue Reading »
Jul
15
2008
As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted …
It’s a girl!
Healthy (she has all 20 requisite digits), lusty (she cries louder than an Italian mama at a family wedding), rosy-cheeked, pink-skinned, (you were expecting olive-green, perhaps?), almond-eyed, raven-haired (all seven of them) Irish-South African beauty; born November 10 at Westville Hospital near Durban; a bonny, bouncing (father dropped her on the carpet) sister for Alexandra and Kendall, source of curious concern for eight household pets, and cause of great wonderment for proud father … as in: “I wonder how I’m going to pay for all this.”
Mother and child well; father recuperating as well as can be expected.
Continue Reading »
