My first pet...

I remember my first pet. Do you? Well, mine was as much of a pet as can be in the Welsh farmery sense of the word. A sheepdog called Meg. Lovely dog she was, you could just point in the general direction of where the sheep were and off she would disappear like lightning and ten mins later the sheep would be in the pen. She went everywhere with me, was a Princess or a horse for example if I needed her to be (these things happen when you are an only child) and I always remember my Mum saying that if I fell and started crying she would growl at my Mum and blame her. Ahhhh. She never came in the house although desperately wanted to when there was a storm and lived to the ripe old age of 14 and was a trooper till the end.

You may right now be wondering what the hell has made me so nostalgic, but let's face it we all have fond memories of pets coz they are fun, I mean, none of you have ever actually taken one to school when you were a kid and killed it, have you?

Now you are beginning to see my point, aren't you? Horrifying as it may seem. Depending on how quickly the direction this story is taking is dawning on you.

So, couple of months back, having lunch with TB (sushi probably) discussing the finer points of trying to get a child to stay in it's seat for more than a millisecond he mentions that one of his P4 brought a hamster to class no less. Needless to say it was a little distracting. At the time he voiced concerns for the safety of the animal but in all seriousness we didn't think it was possible that harm would truly come to the poor thing.

Cue following lunchtime and TB points out that our worst fears had come true as the hamster indeed was attending class again but this time it was being hurled around the room in a ziploc bag. Nice. Apparently "the bad boys" had killed it. They threw it on the floor. I don't really think I need to put exclamation marks anywhere in the texts I shall allow your eyebrows to do the talking.

...yeah, yeah, I wish I were joking too...

Shocking and unbelievable as it all was we thought that was the end of it. Oh, did I mention they tried to offload the dead little critter onto TB? No? Well, they did.

Last week. P5 bring a Hamster into TB's class and this one is presumed dead on arrival until they spot it twitch and discover it is indeed breathing despite lying on the table legs splayed. This too was also maimed by "the bad boys". Also, they tried to sell it to TB for about 25pence/50cents. Lovely. Dunno about you, but I'm not convinced Thais have the same feelings for animals as we do...could be wrong.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. I did find one of my kids trying to throw a cat into a tree the other day and was stared at by adults for telling him off. I mean, it's a cat, not a bird, it doesn't live in a tree right? Whatever.