2024, animals, education, Words

Laughing Matter

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Some days it’s all about laughing.

On Duolingo yesterday morning, I started a new section – with words such as lazy and messy.  Clean and dirty have come up before so it was nice to have a few more to go with them.  Then came “stinks”.

Several animals have made it into the lessons: cat, dog, bird, penguin, snake, duck, elephant (the very first lesson!).  But yesterday was the first appearance (after 3 years) of hamster.

Duolingo doesn’t just give you words, they put all the words together in sentences and stories for you.  After all these months, I should have seen this coming.

I tuoi criceti puzzano

This translates to “your hamsters stink”.  Not a euphemism for anything that I can find although it does remind me of the Holy Grail line “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”.

I can’t imagine that stinking hamsters comes into conversation too often in one’s lifetime.  My sister had hamsters and I don’t remember them stinking….

What pets did you have growing up?  Did they stink?

26 thoughts on “Laughing Matter”

  1. I had dogs, of course, and rabbits and ducks and even a salamander. Strangely I never had a cat when I was growing up. Maybe my parents didn’t like them. I don’t recall the subject ever coming up.

    All of the animals had their own distinctive smell but I don’t remember any of them stinking. Probably the ducks were the smelliest but ducks aren’t indoor pets, so it wasn’t an issue.

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  2. While my dad was away at a summer school seminar, my mom allowed us to “temporarily” take a kitten for which a friend of mine was looking for a home. Of course we fell in love with Katten, and my dad let us keep her. That was our first pet, unless you count a cocker spaniel we had for just a few months before my sister was born.

    Litter boxes stink sometimes, but unless our cats were sick, they did not smell, as I recall.

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  3. Our first pet was a black cocker spaniel named Lady. I also had a box turtle named Sophie. Sophie disappeared while I was off at the boarding school. Mom claimed that Lady had killed her, but I suspect that she either gave her away or just put her outside to fend for herself. I really don’t know what happened to her, and it still bothers me. Mom gave Lady to her boss, an old bachelor, after he had taken care of Lady while she was in Ireland visiting her family. She was his favorite companion until she died of old age.

    Years later, after we moved to Lyngby, we got another small, fox terrier-like dog named Lajka. Lajka was a really spunky and fun little dog that everybody loved. He was struck by a car and killed when he was six years old.

    My parents didn’t like cats, so we were never allowed to have one. None of our pets we did have were stinky.

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  4. We had dogs. Sometimes they stink. Gus was a Norwegian Elkhound who roamed free at night. He brought us an offering of a dead muskrat every morning. It was clear that he was showing us that he could help provide for the family. Sometimes he got into unknown things during the night when he roamed. He came back reeking like a skunk more than once.

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    1. Back when we lived in Wyoming, our little black Manchester terrier rolled himself in a dead skunk while wasband and I were exploring the site of a petrified forest in the middle of nowhere. The hours long drive back to Cheyenne with Snoopy in the back seat was no joyride, I’ll tell ya.

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  5. As an adult I have had many different pets. I have had an assortment of birds, a white rat (Solo), a gerbil, a guinea pig, an assortment of cats and dogs, and a chinchilla. Juanita was the sweetest, softest little thing, and no ,she didn’t stink because I kept her cage clean. Same thing is true of cat’s litter box. Our current cat, Martha, who at this point is the only pet we have, complains bitterly if the litter box is not up to her standards, and I say good for her. Who wants a stinky outhouse?

    Perhaps I should clarify here, most of the rodents I had, including Juanita the chinchilla, were rescues I adopted, not because I particularly wanted to own such “exotic” pets, but to prevent them from being put down. I didn’t much care for the gerbil or the guinea pig because they didn’t have much of a personality. But Solo and Juanita were smart and very personable creatures, and I had them for years.

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  6. I would imagine pets in the weasel family, such as ferrets, would have an odor. So would chickens.

    I only had dogs and cats growing up, except for a parakeet when I was really small. It met its untimely end when it learned to open its cage, flew too close to our pug, and was gobbled up. That pug was pretty proud of herself, and there were feathers everywhere.

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  10. Cows breath smells nice. The other end… not always so much.

    WP seems to like me today. Or maybe it’s the college computer. Or phase of the moon or something…

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  11. Sometimes the fish tank would stink but that would be because of neglect.

    OT

    I’m watching Twins opening day. It looks like a nice day in Minnesota.

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    1. I think it was on the 2., however, I missed it. A belated Happy Birthday, Linda. Hope you had a nice and quiet celebration of some sort.

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  13. OT – Aboksu, I’m wondering if your friends in Taiwan are safe after the earthquake? Are you getting reports from people you know there? Looks like a terrible mess.

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  14. Vacation

    I love the hour before takeoff,
    that stretch of no time, no home
    but the gray vinyl seats linked like
    unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
    be summoned to the gate, soon enough
    there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
    and perforated stubs—but for now
    I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
    with their cooing and bickering
    or the heeled bachelorette trying
    to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
    exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
    while the athlete, one monstrous hand
    asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
    perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
    Even the lone executive
    who has wandered this far into summer
    with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
    knocking his knees—even he
    has worked for the pleasure of bearing
    no more than a scrap of himself
    into this hall. He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
    they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
    —a little hope, a little whimsy
    before the loudspeaker blurts
    and we leap up to become
    Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17    .

    Rita Dove

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