Got a Harrowing Tale of Pet Ownership?

The first time you stand in your snow covered backyard at night, force feeding your dog hydrogen peroxide and waiting for him to bring up your Valentine's Day candy, you realize that pet ownership is something of a shell game. No one mentions the swallowed sewing needles, the $400 dental extractions, the refusal to use a litter pan. One day you are cuddling a kitten, its eyes wide with innocence, and the next you are administering subcutaneous fluids to that same animal by way of a coat hanger hung in your doorway, while she glowers at you with a promise of retribution. My lifelong love of pets has led me to bathe thumb-sized Russian dwarf hamsters with special hypoallergenic shampoo, to investigate the prospects for evacuating to a hotel with five ducks, and to end up adopting a dog from the arms of a young child in the parking lot of Lowe's Home Improvement, who later cost us thousands of dollars to treat a congenital kidney condition.

I have related to all of you my animal hoarding history here and here and here. Now I am looking for proof that I am not alone in the world–just one crazy soul, afflicted by a desire to accumulate copious pets, impelled by my nature to spend down my income on rabbit care and nurse baby mice from a dropper. I want to create a community for us here on Faith in Ambiguity. (Well, it can be a community for us and for the people who enjoy laughing at us.) These don't actually need to be animal hoarding stories. They can be any sort of ridiculous animal story.

If you've got a funny animal story between 400 and 1200 words, please send it to me tara at faithinambiguity.com. I reserve the right to edit, proofread and make minor adjustments for style, but I promise I will run these by you before publishing, unless you don't care. If you can, please attach an appropriate, legally acquired image file with your post. If not, I will choose an appropriate image to go with it. I will list your name as a guest poster and link to your blog or any other personal site you would like me to link to highlighting your work. I will also tweet the link at least twice, post to my Facebook fan page and to the group blogging platform to which I belong and otherwise try and expose your post. (And you should, too!) By the way, non-bloggers are more than welcome! The first post in this series, which is excellent, is by a non-blogger friend of mine. I asked him to write his story up after I heard it. People who think they "can't write" often have really fabulous tales to tell. I can't wait to see what you all have to say.

And tune in tomorrow for the tale of a cat bath gone so terribly wrong it ended with mouth to mouth resuscitation and a visit to the ER.