They are enjoyable as pets, and very personable. But damn, they are also destructive as all get out. If you weren’t paying him enough attention, our crow would go and pull off the rubber from the windshield wipers on the car, or the rubber trim around the windows of the car or house windows. Re-glazing on both cost a fortune - more than once. Pecked a hole in the screen door porch, and in the window screening to the house because we didn’t let him indoors.
Not to mention the little crow feet in the fresh paint on the roof we put down. We had to go to extreme measures to re-tar some places on our roof to fix a leak - large canvas tarps on some scaffolding so he wouldn’t get in, and get the tar on himself.
There are admittedly a lot of things that I can’t imagine doing that people manage to pull off in their relationships. Like people who have opposite political views, or who have no similarities in taste for books/movies/music.
It’s incredibly convenient to me to just say, ‘‘Hey, let’s do X,’’ and know that person wants to do X at least as much as I do.
Unfortunately, X does not include giant African land snails.
A clean orderly house. He is psychologically incapable of such. And this is not “eat off the floors” clean, it is “put something down on the table without having to push garbage out of the way and getting dirt and dog hair all over it” clean.
He’s a hoarder of broken objects and salvaged materials but I refuse to let him bring them in the house. He piles them against the outside though.
Any utility system or other daily requirement which is like what other Americans have, and can be operated by a reasonable adult (aka me). For example we only heat with wood that he has gathered from our forest and stored in a building across the driveway and up steep a hill which has no light source or door, hence when it is pouring freezing rain the only way to heat the house is to don full rain gear and a headlamp and struggle out there with a wood carrier. Everything else is like that too. My God, the water system.
When I was younger it was usually tolerable, or even smug Luddite fun. It really isn’t any more.
He must, I feel you though, I live in the back water boonies and nothing is easy. If it breaks you may have to wait to get it fixed. Luckily Mr. Wrekker is handy and can usually fix anything if the parts can be had. IF, a big if, he is home. He spends all his time hunting, fishing or preparing to hunt and fish.
A kayak or anything fishing related. We have too much gear already to take on a new hobby, and kayak would take up too much of our limited space. The fishing thing is related to all of her male relatives fish, and she can’t stand it. She’s not losing me to that. Fortunately, I can’t stand fishing. I do, however, like to kayak…
When we had three dogs and five cats, and a new baby (we’d had more pets before, but not with a baby), DH declared a moratorium on pets. It was finally lifted when we got down to one cat and one dog, and the cat was seriously lonely.
He has also declared a moratorium on pinball machines. Unless I get a job that allows us to move, comfortably, into a three bedroom apartment, or a house with a finished basement in addition to two bedrooms, a living room and a dining room, no more pinball machines.
Our current apartment has a huge master bedroom with it’s own bathroom, a high ceiling that had allowed us to build a wonderful sleeping loft, which we fitted with a king sized mattress, and an extra long twin lengthwise, so my 6’2 husband is comfortable for the first time (I stitched blankets and sheets together to make ones that fit). It frees up tons of floor space, the room has 12’ ceilings, so we built the loft at the 6’6 mark. We lose a foot to the platform and mattresses, but that still leaves 4’6 of headroom. It’s perfect. I don’t want to move.
I don’t anticipate being able to afford another machine anytime soon, so it’s all good.
I had a friend in the 4th grade who did that. She took excellent care of that crow, and had it for years. She now does professional animal rescue, and has a pet Great Horned Owl. The owl broke its wing, and while it can flutter from perch to perch, it cannot fly, and therefore cannot hunt. She feeds it mice that she gets from pet stores which supply them for snakes, some occasional ground turkey, and few vegetables that she makes a mash out of.
She has all sorts of animals. She has a number of three-legged deer that were shot by hunters, but not killed, and later had their gangrenous limbs removed. She has a number of albino animals. She has raccoons and squirrels people hit with their cars and bring in, and sometimes she releases them, but some of them never recover enough.
She also has dogs that she trains for obedience trials.
She makes money by receiving gov’t grants and private donations, and by giving presentations, She has wild animals that are safe to introduce to children, because they are tame, and she explains to the kids why they are tame. She also does a dog-safety program that is really good.
TL;DR: I knew someone with a tame crow. She grew up to work in animal rescue, and to do excellent programs for children.
A 4th lil dog, a 4th cat… a 4th child back in the day.
He’s against me having my own bedroom once the kids move out. I would think that after the last time I crawled into bed dead drunk and kept touching his face (for some reason) he would be all for it.
Holes in the walls to hold up various paintings/pictures/knickknacks that I have accumulated over the years. Might be because of how the wood is in our house (a mix of cherry and oak). Might be a holdover from his childhood. All I know is that even using tacks gives him the heebiejeebies.
Now I want a crow! Or a grackle. Smaller black bird with a total “DILLIGAF” attitude. I know that they can mimic sounds, when I was working in Phx, I heard many a cell phone ringing in the trees
My BB won’t let me have goats. I think that goats are awesome, probably in good part to their DILLIGAF attitude while they are eating a car.
I’ve always wanted geese. They are the greatest watch-dogs in the world and very affectionate to their people. Not as smart as black birds, but still fun. My BB apparently had run-ins with his Grandmother’s geese when he was 5 or 6 and refuses to even discuss the idea of living with geese in his yard.
Lamps, (sigh) all these years later, I still remember those lamps. They were largish ginger jar shape blue on white Asian design with dark wood bases. They would have perfectly complemented the furnishings in our living room. They were in a store my coworkers and I walked passed every day during our lunch break. Everyone knew I wanted those lamps. My husband (I left him about 7 years after the lamp incident.) said no to the lamps. He had picked the wallpaper, paint, window treatments and ALL the furniture in our home. The only thing I was allowed to select was the wallpaper in the kitchen (because of course that was the room I would spend most of my time :smack:)
This was just one of a huge list of things he would not let me have. I do not recall any others or most of our life together; but the lamps often come up in conversation when I run into a former coworker from back then.
Of course there was the time when my wife Gloria wanted to get a parrot- specially the breed called an amazon. When she said she thought we should get an amazon I replied “Oh; will she be blonde with big boobs?” Man, the look I got…
I’m reminded of a short conversation a couple had when they first saw Return of the Jedi…
people jump on speeder bikes and zip off into the forest
Husband: sits up straight
Wife: No.
Husband: But… speeder bike slams into tree and explodes
Wife: And that’s why.
