Jul. 29, 2006 ~ Lotter Farms
Raising up in bed the other night, I said to Husband,
"Wouldn't it be GREAT if we had an otter?"
"Just the one?"
"Well, no. We'd probably need a whole bunch of them. A family. With brothers and sisters, mama otters, daddy otters, and cousins, too."
"They'd probably sleep all the time and annoy you, honey."
"Nuh-uh. If they were OUR otters, it would be okay to wake them up every now and then. To, uh, feed them. Otters gotta eat."
It probably says something about me that Husband didn't find this conversation at all strange. He is used to such things.
So I related this conversation to College Boy today, and expanded on the idea. We don't just need otters, we need LLAMAS, too. Because I love otters and llamas.
We would probably need to build them a pool. And some sort of housing. Air-conditioned, of course. Nobody likes baked otters -- especially the otters. And the llamas, they would need some sort of special facility, too. Maybe even their own pool. I know of llamas that have their own kiddie pools, and I've seen them in them, cooling off.
Son was going along with all this, saying "Uh-huh." and "Then what?"
Obviously, all this would get pretty expensive. I can't see any way to finance it other than winning the lottery.
"Uh huh. Sounds like a good plan, Mom." It is hard to tell over the phone, but I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes.
And then I'd need to hire someone to take care of all these critters. Where do you find people who know a lot about llama/otter care? At the zoo, most likely. So I could go to the local zoo and hire somebody who worked there, offering to pay them a lot more than they were currently making.
And they would need a place to live, so the llamas/otters could have really high quality care. So we could build a little caretaker's home.
"Kind of like at the place we almost bought?"
"Yeah, kind of like that, only nicer. Without red carpet."
And we could call it all LOTTER Farms! Get it? Llama/Otter -- L/otter! Financed by the lottery!
"Mom... I hate to have to say this but you are a little bit weird sometimes."
So I shared this conversation with Husband just now, and he said, thoughtfully, "You forgot the fish. Otters have to have fish."
Slapping self upside head...
"Oh, you're right! I forgot about the fish! We would need to have a pond just for the organic fish."
"Organic fish?"
"Duh. You don't expect our otters to eat regular fish, do you?"
Then he mumbled something I couldn't quite make out, but I'm almost positive I heard the word "strange" more than once.
"Man. We are going to have to pay our guy more."
"Our lotter guy. No... wait... I guess he'd be a lotter-ish guy now. And we'll have to pay him more to take care of the fish."
"Tell you what. You take care of the first part, okay? You win the lottery and we'll see about the otters."
But really, it's a plan. It will be one of the first things I do, no doubt, should we win the lottery. There are worse things, right?
Right?
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