IT'S A DAD'S LIFETheir sights may be set on a pony, but until then, the snails will have to do, writes Adam Brophy
THEY HAVE wanted pets for as long as they can talk and I have fought them all the way. My method is simple: I promise them they can have anything they want when I am rich, but until then we are the only animals to inhabit this house.
They think we're all going to have riches beyond our wildest dreams some day. Bless.
First up, and no surprises there, was a puppy. As each set of cousins gets a puppy I curse their parents, and am forced to fend off increasingly frenzied requests. In despair they settled on begging for a kitten (they are dog children and will only bother with disloyal felines if there are no other options).
I knew they had no real grá for cats so chose to ignore the request and it went away.
Next up the elder tried a tack which impressed me for its outlandish moxy. Instead of working her way down the food chain and suggesting a hamster or a guinea pig she went after the grail of pets - a pony. We could keep it in the back garden and she would ride it on Dollymount.
Somehow she took me so unawares that she committed me to a promise that could have serious repercussions. Again there is the proviso that I be rich, but not too rich she says, obviously learning quickly, but if we ever move outside the city I am sworn to, quite literally, pony up. Suddenly the rural idyll is, if not less attractive, certainly more expensive.
The younger hovered behind her throughout negotiations and as the deal was struck piped up with a "And me too?" To which there was no answer but "of course".
Time passed and an infatuation with sea animals grew. Our staple dinner conversation now involves discussion of the largest and most dangerous whales, sharks and dolphins. Never the most beautiful or friendly.
There are imaginary sea animal death matches played out where a box jellyfish takes on a great white shark, or a blue whale swallows a swordfish before the swordfish slices its way out of the whale's belly. The size of a fish is measured in house widths (we're on a pretty narrow terrace) and visitors are dazzled by the kids demonstrating how some whales are "four houses long".
The incessant chatter finally wore me down and I relented and suggested a small aquarium with a couple of exotic creatures known among lay people as "goldfish" thrown in.
We didn't have to decamp far to make the purchase as there was a tropical fish shop a stone's throw away off the Ballybough Road (where else would you find one?). I say "was" because he had shut down the month before we visited.
I checked next door in Henry's Tackle Shop (again, where else would you expect to find a tackle shop but on the Ballybough Road?) and Henry told me the owner had "just gotten fed up". Exotic fish sales must have been slow in Ballybough.
There was, of course, devastation among the troops. They had cracked the commanding officer, made their approach and been foiled at the last.
I felt a little sad, but not sad enough to let them know there might be other fish shops in the city. Let them learn to deal with disappointment, I thought, with the sweet sensation of having dodged a bullet.
I should have taken them fishing. The elder, resourceful tyke that she is, decided to take matters into her own hands. Determined to have pets to call her own, she gathered earth, moss, twigs and leaves as I made my annual foray into the garden with a shears.
All these were tamped down into an old lunchbox and off she went hunting for snails. The first crew comprised Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in honour of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Soon added to these were Mr Tumnus and the Professor, but a couple of accidental squashings and a suffocation brought her back down to Peter and Susan alone.
Lessons learned, she revisited the garden and now we have a large box of snails living in her bedroom.
She sits and runs through whole scenes from her favourite books with them in starring roles, and grants the younger access occasionally to have teddy 'n' snails tea parties.
Snails are raced, snails are cleaned and snails are petted. The pair of them wander round with slow moving shells attached to their limbs.
Due to the surreal and Cronenbergesque existence the missus and I are currently living where our house seems to be crisscrossed with luminescent tracks and the kids are barnacled, I can't help but think we should have gone with the puppy.
abrophy@irish-times.ie