Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  Stinker doesn’t cotton to men using the word “fabulous.”

  Here’s what the man wrote—a man more obsessed with Shrimp than is Bubba from the movie Forrest Gump:

  “I really want it to be special. She’s my dream girl and loves shrimp and romance. I’ve never met a woman who loves shrimp this much so I want it to be the best money can buy. Please advise on fabulous shrimp. P.S. She even makes her own shrimp pancakes every Sunday morning.”

  Stinker Jenkins Brown had some mighty fine advice:

  “Take that little piece of legal ass to Captain D’s or Long John’s,” he wrote. “There ain’t one on St. Paradise, but if you catch the ferry for about $20 a pop and then a bus for another $10 over to Cancun, you’ll see both places on restaurant row. It’s only an hour away and worth every damned penny. Both them restaurants have your deep fried and heavily battered shrimp plates for about $3.99 each or you can super-size for another 40 cents or so. I’ll probably be there, too, as an added bonus for your dining pleasure.”

  The guy wrote back right away, typing out a single word:

  “Dickhead.”

  Stinker also answered all questions on the board related to where to find good parties and easy women:

  “You’uns jest need to meet me at the White Sands Resort and Villas. I’ll have every hooker within a 10-mile radius by my side and gallons of corn likker. Come on down and party with good old Stinkeroo! I might even warsh my privates for the occasion.”

  A few weeks after the birth of Stinker I got kicked off the board, apparently by the site monitor who tracked my IP address and information. Incidentally, when we got to the resort, my meanness came back to haunt me (just as Mama said it would) and most of the hotel’s clientele were drunk old men. Probably those who were waiting to party all night with Stinker Jenkins Brown and his Chain Gang.

  That experience, unfortunately, didn’t cure my message board banditing, and I’d strike here and there, as if I was 12 again with eight giggling girls on my green shag carpeting, half-tucked into sleeping bags and the pink Princess phone in the center of us, right next to the Southern Bell phone book listing everyone in LaGrange, Georgia, and surrounding areas.

  The next time I needed information on a topic I knew where to go. Straight to the message boards. This particular incident concerned my new hamster, and I searched lovingly for the ideal board devoted solely to these adorable, precious-faced rodents. I’d bought a golden hamster at the mall, a starter pet for my children in the pre-dog years.

  As soon as I got the beloved rat home, he began pooping so much his entire body turned wet and yucky, all the pine shavings in his cage sticking to his inside-out rectum. His fanny swelled and his brown eyes shrank. He could barely sip water and he smelled awful, an overpowering stench that permeated the entire house.

  I checked out one of the various hamster discussion boards and read some of the posts, hoping for insight as to the types of ailments hamsters encountered and the solutions these kind people would offer. Here’s what I found—a site that offered more entertainment than I could ever find on cable TV:

  Help Me I’m Sorta Dumb wrote: My friend’s hamster had some of the symptoms of what I think might be a stroke or even a demon. And now I have a couple of questions. After she was done playing with him, she went to put him back in his cage and the hamster would twist around, flopping his body and his head around like an evil spirit had overtaken him. He tried to hang like a bat but was foaming and growling. He bared his big bottom teeth and green stuff frothed down his chin. What could this possibly mean?

  A concerned hammy owner— God Loves Hammies, too from Ohio—answered the question and offered wisdom:

  You must get him into church immediately. Make sure he’s on various prayer lists. I had one do the same thing, took it to the vet, and they said, “All you can do at this stage is pray.”

  Good Lord. These posts about hamster disorders and behaviors caused me to wonder two things: Were these people for real or just zealots and perverts with fetishes? Could such a small pet possibly become inflicted with so many maladies, both of the physical and mental variety?

  Then there was Newly Widowed from South Dakota, who wrote:

  My cute lovely golden hammy is dead. Last night he was sleeping like a baby, and when I examined him this morning, I go and see that he had something stuck in his abdomen, and at first I think maybe it’s one of them ‘outie’ type belly buttons, so I tried pulling on the crusty tip but it only hurt him. He yelped and had real tears on his face. This morning he was dead. I guess he’s in a better place.

  “This must be a joke site,” I said to myself, as I figured it was now safe to type in my own concerns about my new pet’s blistered and soaking-wet fanny. My husband entered the room, hearing me talking to myself and noticed the screen where a bunch of dancing hamster icons decorated the page.

  “What is that? My God! Are you on a hamster Web site?” he asked.

  “No, I’m on a ‘How to Poison Your Husband and Not Get Caught’ discussion board.”

  “Get a life!” he muttered and trudged to bed because it was 2 AM and his wife was talking about teddy bear hamster troubles instead of wearing a teddy from Victoria’s Secret and getting friendly on the Sealy.

  While waiting on someone to reply to my post, I read a few more, because the truth is, the board was hilarious and much more engaging than my mattress at this stage of the marital game.

  This headline, from a concerned hammy parent, caught my attention immediately: HE AIN’T GOT NO EYES !

  I recently received a hamster that was born with no eyes. I was wondering if that would affect his ability to breed with a normal female hamster.

  My fingers itched. I felt a prank coming on and just couldn’t help it. Oh, if only I was a normal woman who could go to the mall, buy some Estée Lauder and get this out of my system, but NO! I was 12 years old again, my head in pink sponge curlers, my girlfriends giggling all around as I opened the phone book to the Italian restaurant section to order a Sheep’s Ear Pizza or to Eckerd Drugs so I could pretend to be Chinese, trying my best to ask for sanitary napkins.

  “You haffa fagina Band-Aid, mistah?”

  My fingers, shaking slightly, hit the computer keys as if numbers on the Princess phone of my youth while I answered HE AIN’T GOT NO EYES !

  “Actually, it could help matters if your hammy “ain’t got no eyes,” Love is blind, as they say, and a frisky hammy, like a frisky hubby, needeth no eyes as long as they have a pointing stick, if you get my drift.”

  Not yet tired and enjoying these reads, I continued the message chatting and posting.

  LAZY HAMSTER!!!!!

  “My hamster is so lazy. She’s never up early in the morning or late at night. Why is she so sleepy when she sleeps 24 hours a day? And how can I stop her from being lazy?”

  Well, that’s a no-brainer.

  “Get her a husband,” I typed. “She’ll never have another moment’s peace or rest.”

  After about an hour of this No-Life nonsense, I finally received a couple of replies to my post. The others said I needed to take my darling ham
ster to a vet immediately and that the condition was one called WET TAIL and completely and utterly fatal within days. By the time I had discovered this message board and wealth of help, it was too late. The vet put my poor hammy to sleep and I sat there and cried like a baby even though I’d only had it five days.

  I soon bought another that lived two years and died from tumors that erupted on his sides, exploding goiters I treated with Neosporin and love. I’d take him out for walks and feed him forbidden foods, knowing he had cancer and I needed to give him joy in his last days. Often I’d slip Motrin and mild tranquilizers in his water bottle and he seemed at peace and even smiled slightly on several occasions.

  The next hamster, Hammy III, died of a heart attack. I’m certain of it because of her position in the aquarium. I came home from work and she was lying on her side, one paw clutching her tiny rodent heart and the other reaching out as if to dial 911. Her face registered chest pains and her eyes bugged out.

  We buried her in tinfoil and a shoebox, just like we did with Hammy I and Hammy II. The message board and kind supporters said, “We feel your pain and are here for you.”

  They understood what the common man didn’t—and that was how fetching and attaching a hamster could be, these tiny teddy bears of the heart.

  It’s a comforting thought to know that when I graduate to a guinea pig, there is also a message board for those angels of the rodent world.

  Doggy Liposuction and Humpathons

  A wonderful coworker came into the office the other morning quite distraught about her dog. We know people love their pets as if they were children—some more—giving the kids the Alpo and the dog the blackened tuna with the raspberry ginger sauce.

  “What’s the matter, Melissa?” I asked, noticing she wasn’t her typical smiling self. She’s never been one of those irritatingly chipper coworkers who change personalities when their Lexapro kicks in, but she’s always pleasant.

  “It’s my dog,” she said, and sat at her desk, slowly turning on her computer to begin another day in the Features department. “She’s had major surgery.”

  I took a bite of my 65 percent dark cocoa candy bar, a must for a journalist on deadline when the boss won’t let you have a pint of Wild Turkey. “Is she OK, hon?”

  “Her bottom will be sore for a while, but much more comfortable. It was getting so large she couldn’t even walk.”

  I thought I’d heard incorrectly. Was she saying her dog had a superfat ass that needed surgery? Or did she mean perhaps a St. Bernard had tried to hump the dog and got stuck?

  I tried to imagine what sort of ailment the animal could have had. “She’s home, right?” I was asking questions trying to ease into my real question: “What in the world happened to that dog?”

  “She’s getting better, and the pain meds are helping. Poor Stella.”

  All right, enough, damn it. I’m asking.

  “Hon, what happened to Stella?—if you don’t mind talking about it.”

  She looked up from her computer. “No, I’m all right. She had some liposuction and they used lots of stitches.”

  I about dropped my chocolate bar and would have but it had cost $3. She couldn’t have possibly said her dog had lipo. Could she?

  “Liposuction. You mean that procedure where they jab giant suction tubes in you and crank up a slurping machine?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why and on what area would your dog need lipo, sugar?”

  By now, several coworkers were listening and a smile crept on Melissa’s face.

  “Her vulva,” Melissa said. “It just kept getting larger and larger every day.”

  Well, heaven forbid. I’d never heard anything like this in all my twenty-five years writing for the paper and believe me, I’ve endured some real crazies calling up with wild stories. An elderly man swore that a gorilla tried to climb into the passenger side of his restored DeSoto automobile one morning. “I could tell he loved my car and wanted to drive it,” the man said. “Call my neighbors, I’ve got proof.” I’m quite certain his neighbors were the men behind bars right next to him.

  Melissa, though, is a sane and rational woman, making me wonder why she entered into journalism in the first place.

  “Did I hear you correctly? Did you say your dog had surgery on its vulva?” I tried to remember what a vulva was, knowing it was some part belonging to the possum.

  She nodded and I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. Then she began to laugh, and the entire department, with the exception of a dullard, laughed, too. Turns out one day that doggy’s possum began to swell and never stopped, soon becoming so large it was frightening to others and debilitating to the dog. One isn’t used to seeing dogs with big old vaginas like the butts on baboons.

  I was like a 13-year-old boy in sex-ed class, unable to control my laughter. Poor dog. Poor old pooch with a giant puss!

  Melissa is a good sport and didn’t mind revealing all the uplifting details concerning how her beautiful dog, Stella, one she rescued from death, began developing GDVS—Giant Dog Vagina Syndrome. Each day her canine’s vulva continued growing until soon it was dragging the ground like a long wedding-gown train.

  She took Stella to the vet. Well, let me tell you something. That dog got the royal treatment. You’ve heard of the latest surgery Dr. Rey on 90210 does? Puss-beautification procedures? Women going in because they don’t like how their Coochie Snorchers look after having had kids? Well, this dog got the works and then some!

  “They performed liposuction of the vulva and cut parts of it out,” Melissa said, as poker-faced as if reporting a news story on air. I wondered why she didn’t burst out laughing. I also used to wonder how those people talking about Kotex and FDS didn’t crack up on the commercials, too.

  “Stella looks and feels so much better.”

  I checked and Stella’s vet confirmed that the dog had a nip and a tuck. You may think that’s strange but lots of people, especially Hollywood and socialite types, send their animals in for plastic surgery procedures to make them better-looking. I’m not making this up. Google it and you’ll see.

  According to an article at www.msnbc.com, facelifts, tummy tucks, nose jobs, breast reductions, testicular implants and cosmetic dentistry aren’t just for rich humans beings. Some of the procedures, as in precious Stella’s case, are necessary, while others are simply the choices of vain owners.

  In Hollywood, there’s actually a doc they call “Veterinarian to the Stars.” The most popular surgeries involving pets include reconstructive operations, vets say, but occasionally a dog owner isn’t happy about sagging teats or ugly fannies.

  Let’s say, for instance, the dog’s eyelids drooped to the point he couldn’t see his pan-fried grouper encrusted with almonds and a lemon butter sauce? Or her tummy got so big it scraped the ground when she tried to walk across a room.

  Some dog breeds truly have conditions that lend themselves to plastic surgeries such as full facelifts (think basset hounds) eyelifts, rhinoplasty and tummy tucks, vets say. The cost is usually about $1,000 a pop.

  Which leads me to the question I plan to ask Stella’s vet who has yet to return my follow-up calls and it’s been six months:

  “Could you perhaps do a tummy tuck on me if you are able to do one on a dog? I’m not much bigger than a Great Dane.”

  Think of the money we’d all save by not paying the Dr. Reys of the world $9,000 for the job. I c
ould pay Stella’s vet and come out looking like Halle Berry for a fraction of that price.

  Here’s what one vet said, ignoring me when I decided to ask him for a tummy tuck.

  “The most common areas for our plastic surgery expertise concern an animal’s skin folds, particularly around the eyes, lips, tail and vaginal areas.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’ll take it all, except for the vaginal area. My belief is, ‘If I don’t HAVE to see it, why bother fixing it?’”

  This doctor did not laugh.

  I also learned that chin lifts are common in dogs to curb excessive drooling, which would be really good for drunken golfers in Myrtle Beach who hit the titty bars at night. And dental work can be performed on dogs. Think of all those breeds with underbites.

  One vet said he performed a root canal on a ferret. And many say braces are fairly common. My opinion is that if a vet would go to that much trouble, why can’t he toss a few willing Human Case Studies into the mix and see how the results come out?

  In the end, Stella’s vulva returned to near normal, with the exception of a vagina that moved higher and can now be seen by the naked eye just below her tail where her anus used to be. I’m not sure where the anus is. Maybe somewhere along her spine?

  The point of all this is that pets are expensive and can cause more chaos than a bunch of children running loose.

  My former dog Putt-Putt—the one we bought from the two-fannied lady, a woman with a big hanging front ass and not much of a back butt—had wrecked two cars, chewed through $500 worth of plantation shutters, gnawed the cushions out of all the family’s shoes and amputated every Barbie my daughter owns.