When Goldfish Murder is the Gateway Drug

Not satisfied with the goldfish murder of last month, Ivy raised the stakes on Wednesday and tossed Claudia the dog over the stair railing treating her to a two story fall onto hardwood floor.  If you are an animal lover and you’re like, no way am I reading this if the dog dies, I’ll just tell you now: Miraculously, she is still with us.

The FBI says serial killers abused animals as children, which has me wondering.  Do you think Jim Jones, the Kool-Aid guy, had pets?  How about The Unabomber?  Or Jack the Ripper?  There is speculation that Jack the Ripper was a member of the royal family, who you know had pets because the royal family is into pets in a major way.  Those corgi dogs with their ground-skimming bellies are the Queen’s children. Prince Charles said recently the reason he was so miserable is that he only spent one hour a day with his mother as a child, whereas those dogs were co-sleeping with Queen E. for decades.  She probably went to their doggie piano recitals and gushed over their report cards and volunteered in their computer lab at school.  All the while Prince Charles is in boarding school getting his knuckles rapped for getting caught reading the sexy parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  (Side note: no one every suspected Prince Charles of being Jack the Ripper.  Just one of his inbred relatives.  I think.  I’m not sure.  This was in Victorian times.  I wasn’t there.)

Where was I going with this?  Right.  Ivy.

So on Wednesday afternoon, we get home from preschool pick-up and Ivy says her skirt is wet.  This is a ploy.  Her skirt is not wet she just wants to change her outfit.  She goes upstairs and Clyde takes my phone and calls my mom. He likes to talk on the phone a lot.  He is good at it.  Except for the sign-off when he’ll cut you off mid-sentence and say: “I’m going to hang up on you now.” Ivy is useless on the phone.  She presses it to her eyeball as if it’s a camera and then yells: “I can’t hear anything!” So Clyde’s on the phone, I’m upstairs with Ivy and then I go to my bedroom to get my computer and I hear this thud.  It is very clearly the sound of something hitting the ground from a far distance.  There is a pause and then the worst kind of screaming/howling you have ever heard.  I run towards the noise and see Ivy peering down from the top of the stairs.  I look down to the first floor and there is the dog, on her side, shivering and howling and looking like the brand new owner of a broken back.  It’s obvious what’s happened.  I turn on Ivy. “You killed the dog!” I shout.  Then I grab her by the arm and haul her into her bedroom and shout: “Don’t come out!  I’ll deal with you later!” Ivy is by now sobbing but I can’t tell if it’s from my yelling or because she’s sorry.  Then I run downstairs and crouch by Claudia who is now making a growling sound dogs make when they’re about to peel your face off with their teeth.  I grab the phone from Clyde and tell my mom to come over and watch the kids so I can go to the vet.  And though she lives 20 minutes away, she gets there in 10 and the first thing she says to me is: “I think Ivy needs therapy.  That girl has no empathy.” Looking at the dog curled up on the floor in a kind of fetal position, it’s a little hard to argue.  I scoop up the dog and speed to the vet.  The vet orders all kinds of x-rays, takes Claudia from me and then meets me in an exam room about a half hour later. “Your dog is very lucky, no permanent damage,” she says. “That’ll be $400.” She doesn’t say that last part.  The front desk lady says that.

As I’m driving home, I wonder if this is going to escalate.  Did Jack the Ripper have a goldfish or a hermit crab or perhaps a guinea pig? Do you think Mrs. Ripper took little Jack to Petco and he clasped his murderous hands together and said “Oh mummy, please can I have the brown and white guinea pig? I shall name her Chesnut!  Oh mummy please can I?” Then he took her home and put her in a Habitat cage and when his mom went to bed, he yanked Chesnut out of her cage and tortured her with a Victorian crimping iron.

This image came up when I searched for "Victorian guinea pig" so I'm pretty sure this was Jack the Ripper's ACTUAL guinea pig.

Or maybe just bad outfits?

Look at the crown! Proof Jack the Ripper was actually a member of the royal family!

Surely Ivy’s not the only child who has been mean to animals and turned out not to be the Green River killer.  Right?  I mean I myself have indulged in a bit of this.  As a child, my sister and I put Hammie the hamster on the record player and watched her go around and around.  We did it on the slow speed, but that doesn’t make it right.  The hamster survived with nary a dry heave or dizzy spell, but soon after this incident, she gave birth, which was surprising since we thought we’d bought a boy hamster.  Just a few hours after giving birth to her tiny fur-less babies, she picked them up one by one from the nest and as casually as eating an ice cream cone, bit. their. heads. off.  Every last one.  Are you doing that creeped out full body wiggle at your desk right now?   Because I am, and I knew it was coming.  You didn’t.  (Side note: if you’re NOT doing that creeped out full body wiggle, you might be a serial killer too.  Just saying.)  I believe that this single act of tortured merry-go-rounding addled her brain and caused the hamster massacre.  Had those little baby hamsters lived to tell and had I asked them to raise their hands if they thought their decapitation was brought on by their mother being subjected to a ride on the turntable, there would have been a bunch of headless hamsters with their hands up.  But I didn’t turn into a serial killer.  Not that you know about anyway.

Anyway.  When I got home from the vet, there was Ivy, still a little weepy. “What do you have to say to Claudia?” my mother prompted Ivy. “I love you.  I won’t do it again,” she said to Claudia, who visibly flinched.  Ivy looked sorry and  I’d like to think that she’s just a little slow on the whole you can’t take fish out of water and you can’t toss dogs over banisters thing and that it’s not malice after all. A friend of mine told me I should channel this apparent “gift” she has.  “With what, jousting classes?” I asked. “Women’s cage fighting,” she said.  So I’m looking for a Cage Fighting for Tots class.  Maybe they offer it through the rec center? I may already have a costume she can wear, so that’s a start.

The song playing when Ivy enters the cage for a bout? "Stop! In the Name of Love" (Before I Break Your Face. Think it Oh Oh-ver.)

Tagged as: claudia, ivy, pets, robot crying, serial killers