CHLOE

For my cousin it was a cuddly golden retriever named sam, and my neighbor mimi, a sweet kitten named Snowball.  My old baby-sitter even owned a goldfish named "Peppe" who lived to be twenty-six years old!  Chloe, my first pet, was neither sweet, nor was she especially cuddly. In fact, her image brings about word associations such as tyrant, horror, snarl, and teeth, just to name a few...

                 We got Chloe when I was five years old.  I had just moved into my grandparents house after being taken away from my mom by CPS.  My grandparents, in an effort to console a motherless child, thought it would be a brilliant idea to get me a puppy.  They found a rancher couple in Montana who raised Australian Shepard puppies, and requested that their last female pup be sent to our home in Tucson immediately.  So, one day after school, my Nana picked me up and brought me to the airport, so I could be the first to meet my new best friend... or so we thought.  The wait at baggage claim seemed an eternity. I counted fifty seven pieces of mono-chrome luggage before the grey plastic puppy carrier appeared on the conveyer belt. My eager little fingers reached out to grab it, and I was almost whisked away with the rest of the unpicked luggage, or I would have been inf my nana hadn't come to my rescue. Once we were safe on solid ground, I peered inside the breathing holes to find a giant dustbunny; gray and white fuzz, with two of the palest blue eyes I'd ever seen.  I immediately fell in love and I sat next to the pup in its carrier and sang to it all the way home from the airport.  

When we got home, we took the carrier outside in the backyard.  I was March in Tucson so the weather was perfect- sunny and warm with a slight, refreshing, spring breeze, which carried about the aroma of orange blossoms from our surrounding trees.  I opened the cage, and excitedly awaited my introduction to its captor.  After a few minutes, out she came, even more adorable up close.  She looked up at me with her mesmerizing swimming pools for eyes and for a second, she just stared.  Thinking that this was sign of bonding, I reaching out my hand to pet her.  She snarled at me, flashing two rows of very teeny, VERY sharp, teeth. I retracted my hand, only to have her follow it before quickly lashing her head out to bite me.  She didn't bite hard, but those monstrous teeth were so sharp, they drew blood.  I ran inside screaming, and she followed me, panting and nipping at my ankles.  We couldn't be in the same room together without her lunging and my blood curdling screams for a year and a half.