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Elephant Graveyard

by Kim Bennett

Elephant Graveyard

At fourteen years Pandora swam in a tank outside my bedroom door.
My stepmother’s fish raced beside her. After a week, her petite black
body sank to the bottom her belly full of her tank mates.

At eighteen and a half a blue-heeler, appropriately named Oreo, took a ride to the animal hospital half an hour away. Heart worms. Perfectly treatable, they said. My dog, who would have been blonde if she were human, now sits in an obsidian vase with an insignia of a snail on the lid in our living room. Heartworms didn’t kill her, the neurological disorder did, blew up her insides. When Dad put her to sleep, he called me sobbing.

At seventeen I bought a velvety blue beta and named him Archimedes. He drifted in water, barely moving his fins. Just floated and stared till the end of his days. When he couldn’t take his monotonous life of food and drifting anymore, he had an epiphany, “Eureka!” and dried on the floor like a salted slug.

At four years my pre-school burnt down. My father told the firemen
of my classes’ two pets still left inside. Easter Sunday Dad picks me up in his
submarine strength arms and asks “Guess what you got for Easta’, Kimba’?” On the table sat Tom, the goldfish, and Jerry the gerbil.

Tom committed suicide after three days, jumped right into the great ivory sink while Mom cleaned his bowl. My brother shrieked when Jerry died, after our cat sliced open his back.

At eighteen I bought a new beta for college. He lacked colour and looked more like an angel fish. I could never remember if she was a male or a female and often just switched between the two. He followed me when I walked and liked to dart back and forth. My friend Krysten resented his eyes, and believed her to be a murderous fish, at least a creepy one. His name was Humuhumunucunucuapuaa. I called her Apuaa, and he was the only fatality in my first car accident.

At ten I didn’t shut the gate all the way. Brent, a neighbor boy screamed “Buddles got ran over! Buddles got ran over!” My sister carried him off the highway in her bikini, and her wet scarlet nails stuck to his tan fur. Three cars stopped, but not the one who hit him. I cried “He can’t die!” He was the smartest dog I ever knew. My father laughed and said “Yes, he can.”




05/01/2006

Author's Note: History of my pets

Posted on 05/02/2006
Copyright © 2024 Kim Bennett

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