Each month, Readers’ Digest magazine reports on pets who have saved, rescued, or otherwise helped their owners. Omitted from their pages are cases of pets who have failed to keep their side of the bargain.
Eleven-year-old Mikey Theremin loved taking his 4-year-old golden labrador retriever, Snooch, for walks around the abandoned open cast mine near to their home a few miles outside the town of Tallaght, Montana, even though his stay-at-home mom and unemployed father, Lou and Derek, had expressly forbidden him from going anywhere near the place for fear of unexploded dynamite sticks and the toxic runoff that had never been cleared away from the site after it shut down. But try keeping a young boy away from somewhere as exciting to explore when his nearest friends are in the next state or only available online. So it came as no surprise that the old mine was where state police found Mikey’s remains, trapped by his leg under a pile of skree that must have been disturbed when Snooch ran up the side of the pit in pursuit of some now forgotten and long-lost ball or stick. Police say they were lucky to identify Mikey at all. Even though he’d only been missing for six days and dead for four, most of the flesh off his body had gone, consumed by a ravenous Snooch either unable, unwilling, or too lazy to abandon his master and go get help or find sustenance beyond the confines of the vast pit. Lou and Derek still look after Snooch, “because it’s what Mikey would have wanted,” but they cannot help, when they look into his eyes, but think of their beloved son lost forever, and wonder which of them might be next.
Morgan Chesthair of Donacarney, Illinois, loved the company of Charlie, the professionally trained spider monkey provided to him by the local social services to provide him not just with companionship but also to work as a helpmeet around the home, turning on and off lights, the heating, the TV set, and anything else that the severely physically challenged Chesthair pointed at with the laser pen attached to his headband. Thus it was Charley who, one November morning, opened the front door to several agents of the FBI investigating a series of racist emails sent using Chesthair’s email address and from his PC threatening violence and abuse against a number of prominent figures in the African-American community, including the family of President Obama. “I had no idea,” pleaded Chesthair. “I can only think that while I was in bed asleep Charley was turning on the PC himself and sending out these abusive messages in my name. Some of the language was truly appalling.” This isn’t the first time Mr. Chesthair has had bad luck with pets. A German Shepherd he owned five years earlier had to be put down after savaging an Hispanic postal worker.
Sheila Merryface of Ballymun, Idaho, was similarly disappointed by her pet, Peter the Cockatoo, a parakeet given to her by neighbors after they expressed some concerns that it was looking at their children oddly. Sheila was happy to take in the bird but was disappointed that Peter said so little, having been led to believe that parakeets were garrulous birds and could be trained to utter expressions of an apparently congenial nature, such as “Good morning, Sheila” or “You’re looking pretty today.” On reflection, she now says, she should have asked the neighbors where they had acquired the bird from since it was clear with the benefit of hindsight that Peter had merely been biding his time, accustoming himself to Sheila’s habits and learning her daily routine and secrets. When Sheila’s house was broken into four months later and she was tied to a chair in the kitchen by unknown assailants, it was Peter who told his accomplices exactly where all of Sheila’s savings were hidden, which paintings were valuable, where her jewelry was, and where to find the keys to the Lexus and to the front door of her vacation home in Florida. “They didn’t hurt me physically,” said Merryface. “The real hurt is inside. When you know you’ve been betrayed by someone you trusted. And also outwitted by a bird.”
At least Merryface can console herself that birds have legs. Business entrepreneur Frank Scratchings of Phibsboro, New Jersey, awoke the day of his daughter’s wedding to find that the hugely expensive Koi carp he had purchased only a month earlier had somehow managed to pull the tablecloths off all the trestle tables in the marquee set up in the grounds and had dragged the wedding cake, the champagne bottles placed on each table, and all the disposable cameras placed for guests’ enjoyment across the garden and back into their pond. “When I went over to look, I half-expected to find them all drunk and taking photos of one another gorged on cake and laughing it up,” said Scratchings, “But instead there was no sign of them. Not even a note. Seven hundred bucks each, they were. You’d think they’d have some manners.” To this day, Scratchings has no idea where his carp fled to, but he is willing to forgive and forget, if only they’d come home. “Even just a ring to let me know they’re okay,” he says. “The real worry is not knowing.”

(This is an excerpt from Khmer Rouge Strippergram  blog www.thekettleisalwayson.blogspot.com/)

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Khmer Rouge Strippergram