“I told her she was talking to
the organ grinder instead of the...what's the other one? The oily rag
one?”
“The engine driver. Or is it
the monkey you're after?”
Shireen doesn't look up from her
magazine. No change there, then. Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga have
got one over on me as usual.
“I said, what with the
recession, we'll just have to tell them we can't fulfil.”
“Fill what?” Shireen does
look up for a minute, but she's still planning the evening's viewing
and what to download on her iPhone and she's not connecting with my
dilemma.
“If pets were properties...”
“Pardon me?”
“If our pets were properties,
it might make sense to rent rather than buy in the current climate.
That's all I'm saying.”
“Take these five words and put
them in order: thought, haven't, this, you, through,” Shireen is
raising her eyebrows in that way she does when I'm having one of my
brainwaves. “Have you, though?”
I've lost her to media mindless
again, if she ever came back from there in the first place. But now
I'm firing on all cylinders. It makes perfect sense to me. The
customers could rent a pet, say, a shoal of guppies, a dog, a
chinchilla, a guinea pig and have all the advantages of not owning
it. We could offer monthly food subscriptions, vet insurance, all
that day-to-day stuff. We could have a dog-walking service for if
they're too busy for the pooper-scooping malarkey jazz. Virtual pets
were all the rage a decade or so ago, so it's a small step to this,
really. A little bit virtual, a little bit 'a dog's not just for
Christmas.' Best of both worlds.
Shireen doesn't look
that convinced, yet.
I print out some flyers and stick
them in the shop window after lunch. Shireen shouts to me while I'm
mucking out the gerbils. Sounds like she's taken it in this time.
“What's all this,
'Recession-Busting Pet Rentals' business?”
“What I said. Here
comes our future. Well, for the present, anyway,” I say, trying to
work out whether she's digging it or about to phone for the men in
white coats.
Then a woman comes
in with a little kid. I'd say grandson, because, I'm not being funny
or anything, but there's dentures involved, to be honest and quite
possibly mint imperials.
I go straight in for
the hard sell. I know Shireen is barely resisting a surreptitious
head-bang to 'Applause' because I can see her doing that Gaga
swan-neck thing off the video, inside her head, so she's probably not
going for the big sales pitch any time soon. The little boy is
fingering the counters and eye-balling the Bearded Dragon. I don't
anticipate that becoming a sale in real terms, so I do a bit of a
redirect.
“How would your
little lad like to rent that Beardie Weirdie for a month to see how
it goes, madam?”
“He's not mine,
love, he's our Linzi's. Stop touching the glass, our Callum, you'll
frighten that lizard thing.”
I was going for a
smidgeon of flattery, there, but she doesn't seem to be biting. So I
try again.
“We're offering a
try before you buy, madam. You can do a rental of the Bearded Dragon
on a month by month basis. For an extra premium, we do the feed
thrown in. Can't say fairer.”
“Callum!” The
woman seems more bothered about him picking his nose than getting him
the best bargain this side of Animal Magic.
“Has he had a pet
before?” Now it's time to focus and do a spot of compare and
contrast, swings and roundabouts, checks and balances. Need to get
Grandma going for the renting rather than buying scenario.
“He won a goldfish
when he was little. It only lasted about a month. I think it got fed
up of going round and round. Mind you, it came from a stall just next
to the roundabouts, so I suppose it should have got used to that, by
the time our Callum chucked his quoit over the plastic duck. You're a
right little marksman, aren't you, our Callum?”
Callum's glaring
through the glass at the Bearded Dragon and sticking his tongue out.
I think he thinks it's trying to insult him but we're here to educate
and inform.
“How long do you
think Callum would like to rent the Pogona for?” I say, wondering
if going for the Latin name's maybe trying to blind them with science
a bit too soon in the seller-client relationship.
“It's actually a
Pogona vitticeps,” Callum has transferred his glare to me, “This
one's a Central, or Inland Bearded Dragon. It basks on rocks and is
found throughout semiarid regions of Australia. Why does this label
say 'female'?”
I can see Shireen
has pulled one of her soundproof earbuds out. This could develop into
better entertainment than Big Brother eviction night, in her book,
who knows?
“Well, because it
is. Female, I mean.” I'm just a tad on the defensive now, because,
from Callum's tone, I can tell this could get personal.
“It's a male,”
Callum sounds like Chris Packham when he's doing that thing where he
sets himself up as a connoisseur of all things mammal poo. “I can
understand your mistake. They aren't very strongly dimorphic.”
I might be getting a
bit flustered, as I haven't got time to Google, but I'm keen to keep
my end up.
“It's hard to tell
the difference, you'll find, Callum, as the male and female are very
much alike.”
This doesn't wash
with the bastard offspring of David Attenborough and Michaela Strachan.
I'm a bit distracted by that image of genetic pick-and-mix, so maybe
I take my eye off the ball for a moment, because Callum's straight
back in under my guard.
“You can tell them
apart, actually. The male has a wider cloacal opening and if you
really look at the tail, you can see it's wider at the base than a
female's would be. This is a male because it also has too big a head
to be female. See the big black beard?”
I want to stay aloof
from what is developing into a lecture, but I feel obliged to keep
swimming. I can see out of the corner of my eye that Shireen has
taken her other earbud out, like she thinks it's the final of
Britain's Got Talent and I'm the unpopular one singing songs from the
shows, pitted against the dancing dog.
“He knows his
stuff, does our Callum. Don't you, our Callum?” Grandma looks like
she's about to go into that 'back-of-the-net' pose from Alan
Partridge.
“Plus, the
clincher is that the male has a hemipenis.” Callum points this
particular feature out. I'm ashamed to say, Shireen starts giggling,
which rather lets the side down.
“Lovely,” I hear
myself saying, “so if you know all about it, you'll be eager to get
your hands on this fine specimen, then.”
I turn my attention
to Callum's grandma again, who looks as though she could march him
off for a nutritional sit-down burger treat at any minute, so the
stakes are pretty high, at this juncture.
“Shall we say
three months rental at twenty-five pounds a month, per calendar? That
will be seventy-five pounds in the first instance. I could do you a
nice little package, including food, for another tenner per month,
taking us to a hundred and five pounds. For fifteen pounds extra, we
can do Callum a nice little printed certificate with his name and the
Beardie's on, to say how well he looked after it for the quarter. All
for one hundred and twenty pounds, no hidden extras. What do we say,
madam?”
“What's the name
of the Pogona vitticeps, then?” Callum is looking at the label and
I'm already seeing a fly in this particular ointment.
“Well, as you can
see, its name's Veronica, at this time, but as a special concession to
you, we can call him Veronic instead.” My mind's going down the
same route as Fred the Blue Peter tortoise metamorphosing into Freda
with a lick of white paint.
“I wanted a
female. The label said this was a female. I didn't really want a
male,” Callum is saying. My mind wanders onto Lulu the Blue Peter
elephant, with me fulfilling the role of her hapless handler sliding
about in the...
“She tells me it
comes with a nice hutch.” Grandma is looking at the cages section
with Shireen who seems to have laughed herself out of her catatonic
stupor.
“It's a vivarium,
Grandma,” Callum says. “We'd want something off for it being a
male when I didn't want a male, wouldn't we?”
Grandma nods.
“I could do you
the three months for, say, a modest knock down price of one hundred
pounds.”
“Would that be
with live insects to feed it with?” Callum is really pushing it
now.
“No. We do
pre-packaged sealed boxes of insects dusted with vitamin and mineral
powder.”
“That's not
actually like it would be in their natural habitat. We'd want
something off for that, wouldn't we, Grandma, for it not being fully
authentic nutrition?”
Callum is taking the
proverbial, surely, but Grandma nods sagely. My options are swimming
off up the Swannee without a paddle.
“You said ten
pounds a month for food, but that's not the proper food, so that
would thirty pounds off, like only seventy quid. Then we'd have to be
using Granddad's aphids off his roses and taking moths out of Uncle
Ian's moth-trap and everything, to keep it healthy. That'd be us
feeding it, so we'd need thirty quid like you said.”
“I make that,”
Grandma's got her mobile out and switched on the little calculator
under 'organiser-apps', “forty quid.”
I see Shireen
putting her earbuds back in, trying to look like she's not really
listening any more, but she's not fooling me, because I can see she's
got Lady Gaga on pause.
“The other pet
shop we went in, Animal Magic on the High Street, was offering a
package of special reptile-safe disinfectant for all our hand-washing
and hygiene needs, for fourteen pounds ninety-nine for a big spray.”
I'm beginning to
lose the will to live, but Callum's on a roll.
“Plus they were
offering us a really good book on 'Caring for your Bearded Dragons,
Lizards, Terrapins and other Exotic Reptiles' at half price, that's
ten quid with loads and loads of full colour plates. On top of that
they said we could have the latest DVD of 'Vivariums: Reptiles in da
House' Region 1 and PAL for just twenty smackers.”
“Our Linzi's bloke
calls them smackers, doesn't he, Callum?” Grandma turns to me and
adds, “I think that's a fiver you owe us and you can put Veronic in
the back of the car. We're just parked round the corner. Bring him
back the last day of August, shall we? Callum will be back to school
soon after then, so he'll be wanting something he can take for
walks.”
I let Shireen fill
out the paperwork while I walk round to the car with Callum and a
bloke who comes in with tattoos up to his neck. That's Linzi's bloke,
apparently. He breeds Bearded Dragons. Says he could flog me one
cheap if he's got any going when they bring Ronnie back. That's what
Callum's wanting to call his new temporary pet.
I probably won't be
going ahead with Rent a Pet, just at the present time of asking.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
