Expat pets

[snotface]

I love dogs and when I still lived in England I owned two Dobermanns: a soppy, adorable bitch and one of her sons, an angst-ridden delinquent. Since moving to Thailand, I have lived for more than ten years in a large condo block in Pattaya where dog-owning, quite rightly, is not an option (dogs and condos don't mix). All pets are supposedly banned, though I suspect the occasional budgie, goldfish and the like get smuggled in. A Thai boy I lived with for about a year and a half appeared one day with two terrapins. I wasn't exactly delighted but we put water and a rock in a large china bowl and placed it out on the balcony. It wasn't ideal terrapin terrain but they were both very small at that stage and had room to swim a bit and do some sunbathing. We fed them the Thai green vegetable known as morning glory which they would gulp down greedily.

I became quite fond of them. I christened the slightly larger (probable) male Terry and the slightly smaller (probable) female Terri - well, I thought it only sensible to give them separate, distinguishing names. Every day I would lift them out of the bowl for some exercise. Don't expect much excitement when terrapins are exercising. They would usually make their ponderous way in opposite directions across the balcony and stand in corners facing the wall for minutes on end like synchronised dunces in a classroom. Terri (the probable female) had a very docile temperament but Terry (the probable male) was more aggressive. Sometimes when I lifted him up he would nip playfully at my fingers and once he discharged a surprisingly forceful and prolonged jet of piss up my arm. I like to think this was a show of affection terrapin-style but am open to the possibility that it wasn't that at all. On another occasion I lifted him up when he was wet and slippery and he shot out of my hand like a bar of soap. As he hit the tiled floor with a loud crack I gave an involuntary cry of 'No!' but fortunately he wasn't seriously harmed - just a bit shell-shocked.

Terry and Terri grew in size at an alarming rate and it eventually became obvious that it was cruel keeping them in the china bowl. There was a bar owner in Sunnee at that time (some of you will probably remember the bar - I forget the name) who kept a large water tank containing fish and terrapins and he kindly agreed to take them. For weeks afterwards I would take deliberate detours to pass the bar and check up on our terrapins. I fondly (and dementedly?) imagined that I got looks of recognition from them. After a while I could no longer tell them apart from other terrapins in the tank. Meanwhile, the Thai boy, for whom life was clearly incomplete without animal company, brought home one day one of those rather puny Thai squirrels known as gra-rok. But that's another story...

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