![\"turtle,](\"http:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Turtle_pet.jpg\")
<\/a>She bought a small turtle and a bowl, he named the turtle Fred.\u00a0 For a while things went well and she was impressed with the amount of care and attention her son lavished on Fred.\u00a0 But after a few weeks, that interest began to wane.\u00a0 After a few more weeks, Fred wasn’t looking so good.\u00a0 He wasn’t smelling so good either.\u00a0 She suggested that her son should clean out the bowl.\u00a0 He reluctantly agreed.<\/p>\nIn a while, her son came downstairs and said, “I think Fred is sick.”\u00a0 Closer examination revealed that Fred was no longer among the living.<\/p>\n
This pronouncement elicited a tirade of angry shouts from her son as he tried to blame Fred’s death on everyone and anyone but himself.\u00a0 In time he calmed down and she explained that Fred’s care was *his* responsibility; that was the agreement.\u00a0 He was going to show her that he was responsible enough to care for a small creature so she might trust him with something bigger and harder to care for – like a puppy.\u00a0 He just sulked.<\/p>\n
She told her daughter to take the turtle tank out back and toss the contents over the fence into the field.\u00a0 But the horrified look on her son’s face made her reconsider.\u00a0 He would need closure.<\/p>\n
So a funeral was planned.\u00a0 They found a suitable place to dig a small hole, they said some appropriate words, sang a song and her son placed a small hand-lettered marker which said, “Here lies Fred. Fred is dead.\u00a0 Ask me no questions.”<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of my wife’s co-workers recently related an attempt to teach her 10 year old son responsibility. He wanted a puppy. She knew a puppy was a large undertaking, so she suggested trying something a little less challenging at first; like a turtle. She bought a small turtle and a bowl, he named the turtle … Continue reading “Ode to Fred – a Pet Tale”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muse","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19351,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions\/19351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}