Sex and confusion

It seems that sex and confusion go … er … hand in hand in the experience of looking after pets.

I remember that, when I was about five years old, we used to have a pet cow called Nellie. I don’t remember all that much about Nellie except that she was very BIG, and one day she was sent off to visit a bull. I wasn’t really surprised about this, actually. After all, she’d been alone in a paddock for heaven knows how long and I figured that she was probably in need of some company.

Anyway, after that she got a bit fat and the day came when my mother earnestly took me out to see Nellie have her baby.

As an experience, birth was all a bit much for a five-year-old. All I can remember thinking is that I knew that kangaroos keep their babies in a pouch, but that was a *really* strange place for cows to keep theirs.

Now, after my story about the sexing of Scrooch, friend Sally has told me about her axolotls (pronounced Ax-oh-lot-uls), otherwise known as the Mexican Salamander or the Mexican Walking Fish.

You may have seen these weird fish-type things. They look like a cross between a fish, a lizard, and Kermit The Frog, and have these rudimentary legs, mainly because they, like politicians, are a backward step in evolution. They are descended from terrestrial salamanders.

Sally has two axolotls and, in usual pet owner fashion, wasn’t sure which was male and which was female. So one creature was named Python and the other was called Monty. As it turned out, Python laid the eggs and Monty made the sperm. So, given standard sexual practices, it follows that Python is the female and Monty is the male. OK. That problem was solved.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the term “standard sexual practices” when it comes to axolotls, because Sally tells me that axolotls have a reproductive system that most women would give their eyeteeth for.

Axolotls have a weird mating ritual where the male puts “packages” of sperm around the tanks and then “leads” the female over them. The female then picks up the ones she likes and inserts them into herself with her back legs.

Think about it! No longer any need for headaches as the male doesn’t come anywhere near you and, not only that, but having done his business alone, he then takes you shopping! I can see some women salivating at the thought of it all.

Sadly, the whole sex thing is a lose/lose situation for the male axolotl. Not only does he get no nooky and have to take her shopping in a situation worse than accompanying her into a lingerie store, but Sally says that a breeding female axolotl gets quite hungry and when you are blind and in a three foot tank, the male gets a chunk taken out of him at times. Thus, it’s probably quite understandable that Sally’s Monty is skinny, looks a bit put upon – and has a chunk out of his tail.

I can only say that if I were Sally’s Monty, I would welcome the site of her cat Eugenie sitting on the thick glass lid, and maybe even hope that the lid would slip one day and Eugenie would put me out of my misery.

Then again, it could be worse. Monty could be one of the eggs that Python has just laid. Sally says that she now has to decide whether to leave Python’s newly-laid eggs in the tank or remove them. If she removes the eggs, most of them will not survive. On the other hand, if she doesn’t remove them, Monty and Python, having the average fish’s two second attention span will, as Sally puts it, “forget the miraculous event ...and eat the buggers.”

Sally says that she has toyed with the idea of removing Python and Monty from the tank, but that will only mean she then has to find space for *another* tank of weird creatures.

I have great sympathy for Sally. And even more for Monty!

So, the more pet sex stories I hear from my friends, the more I’m convinced that I must write a book on the subject. I think I’ll call it “Sex and The Single Pet Owner”.