A Couple of Lucky Ducks

So...

I married a woman with allergies. We're talking seasonal, environmental, animal, and food. So I suppose it should not have been that much of a surprise when my children were born with all of these allergies. Now, as parents, we've handled the food allergies. We've taken care of the environmental and seasonal allergies with pills. It's the animal allergies that present the most difficulty for us. Obviously we don't have a house filled with animals or even any animals at all. And that's where the problem is. That's exactly what my kids want; a house full of animals.

They beg, they cry, they plea for pets and we have to remind them that their allergies just don't permit us to bring animals into the house. They counter with the fact that their grandmother has a cat and that doesn't bother them when they are over there. We counter with the fact that every time we enter someone else's home who has an animal, it's instant red eyes and runny noses. And so the debate continues.

A week ago Saturday, my son was signed up to attend a program at the local animal shelter. The program was designed for children to read books to dogs, make a craft and get a free a book. Scratch that. The program was designed to get children into the animal shelter so that they could see all the animals there and pester their parents into buying them a pet. But it seemed like a neat activity and it was free. Double bonus. I couldn't attend so I sent the rest of my family knowing in the pit of my stomach that the next time I saw them, they would be accompanied by a pet.

Later that day, I did see my family again and much to my surprise they were pet-less. Not drama-less, but pet-less. It seems that they did find a cat that they would like to take home. My wife explained that the cat was a older cat, but very friendly. He was de-clawed and neutered and only needed his rabies shots. In addition, he was free. So my family opted to have a visit with the cat in a visitation room were animals and their potential new families have some quality time together. These rooms see a lot of animals in them each day and are not cleaned between visits, meaning a lot of animal hair and dander lying around. So they go into the room with the cat and a few minutes later my son is screaming that his eyes are burning as if someone just splashed his eyes with Louisiana hot sauce.

Now my wife has a situation on her hands. The kids think that by seeing the cat, they are going to get the cat, my son's running around, clawing at his eyes, begging for the pain stop, the animal shelter lady is frozen in shock not sure what to do, and my wife does not know if his allergies are acting up because of this cat or the dog hair in the room. The animal shelter lady offers my wife the option of taking the cat's blanket home to see how our son does with it. If he's okay, then he could be reacting to the dog hair. If not, then it's most certainly not the right cat for us. The problem is that my wife decided to wait to see me and tell me about it, forcing me to make a decision on the issue.

The kids are crying, begging for an opportunity to have a pet. I try to use the allergy argument again but that doesn't help. I decide to visit the cat myself to see how bad it really was. We entered another visitation room and they brought in the cat. He was cute enough but was shedding as if he had a severe thyroid issue. The animal shelter lady explained that it was that time of year when animals shed and we could get a special brush to help with it. The problem I saw was that the cat was black and white and his hair appeared to be magnetized to my children's clothing. Not only could we have animal allergies on out hands, we could also have my wife running around the house vacuuming three times a day. Which ultimately means more work for me as well.

So, to make a long story short, I agreed to take the blanket home, left it in the car, convinced my son that this was not the right cat for us and returned the blanket the next day. My son worked through his feelings about the cat and started talking about the day he would find "the right cat." He eventually stopped talking about pets altogether and I thought the issue was done. I was wrong. Flash forward to this weekend.

My family and I were about town and we stopped in to look at a tractor supply store just for the heck of it. It's the type of store that can meet all of your hardware or lawn care needs. This particular weekend, they also offered a little something extra. In the middle of the store sat several pens filled with baby chicks, baby geese, baby ducks and baby turkeys all for sale and waiting to be taken home. Now we don't live on a farm and I was not sure if I needed a permit to even buy one of these animals but after talking to some of the other families looking at the baby birds it became clear that I did not. I don't remember walking into someone's home to find a pet duck waddling around the living room so I was confused as to what it was that you did with a pet duck. They explained that they would raise the duck for a month or two and then release it in the park.

Now this made sense. There would not be any allergy related issues, the ducks would stay in the garage and we would release them in a couple of months. They did tell us to buy at least two of them as they would get lonely and squawk all night if they were by themselves. So, of course, my children were excited. We were not in a position to purchase them immediately, but discussed the possibility of returning later that weekend and sealing the deal. I fully expected our family to be the proud owners of two ducks by Easter.

As Saturday was drawing to a close, I asked my wife when we were going to get the ducks. She pointed out that neither of the children had brought up the issue and had seemed to have forgotten about it. She was right. Not a peep. Another bullet dodged. But this is surly not the last of it. Right now their attention spans are something we can manipulate but later, I'm sure, I may be writing about the newest member of the household, and God only knows if it will have fur, feathers, or scales.