When my son was in the third grade his class did a unit on crayfish. At the end of the lesson, permission slips were sent home to see if we would take a crayfish home as a pet. Truthfully, I didn’t want a crayfish but signed the slip anyway knowing it would be put into a raffle and not many kids would “win” a crayfish. Well, it backfired and we inherited a crayfish. They named him Cray-Cray and gave him a home on my kitchen counter.

My niece got one too. She came over a week later and informed us that hers died. I felt a little relief. I’d only end up with the mini lobster thing for a few weeks. Months went by. A year went by. More months went by. Damn Cray-Cray wasn’t leaving. My husband was the one who ended up taking care of the thing even though we had that talk about “responsibility” and Logan made ALL those promises that he would be the one to care for it. If I recall correctly, he even signed a document stating the fact. Now I ended up falling for the goldfish I didn’t want, I ended up falling for the lizard I didn’t want, but the crayfish…nope. We never bonded. It was just a container on my counter taking up space.

Then a got an email. An email I privately rejoiced to at work before I went home and put on my sad face.

Cray-Cray was no longer. Can’t say I’m sad about it. Sorry.

How have you done with “unwanted” critters in your family?