Ok taking a break between tasks.
I'm thinking I should tell you the answers.
I'm not very good at these things lol.
I'm a terrible liar!
So technically, they are all true except for the cash money amount.
Literally couldn't think of a good enough lie.
No moving company in the us is allowed to take "pets" in their moving van.
My daughter was in elementary school and had an aquarium full of tree frogs that she'd bring home from the recess in her lunch box because there was a kid in her class (who's probably either serving time somewhere or a serial killer)
who would kill them for fun.
Most we'd just set free in our yard but a few she fell in love with and they became pets.
We tried every which way to send them to ourselves
Fed ex, USPS, snake breeders (who have a license to ship reptiles) ETC.
To no avail.
I even considered putting them in pill bottles with holes cut in the lids and putting them in my bra (pre-9/11) for our flight but my husband nixed this idea emphatically.
She sat on the front stoop for two days bawling her eyes out with her frogs in her lap while the moving company packed us up.
The last thing left to be loaded on the truck was my van.
Finally the driver came over and guided me around to the garage.
He said if there's any last items you want to put inside your vehicle please do so while we go get some lunch because as soon as we get back we're throwing up the ramp and I'm gonna drive it on and then we are hitting the road.
If you DO put any last minute items in there, I'd make sure it's secure on the floor.
If it's about this big ( hand motions exact size of the aquarium) and made of something breakable, like glass, (totally straight face)
I'd pad it somehow.
If it's something sensitive to the cold I'd wrap it in a blanket too because this is a four day drive and even though the destination is the desert, we are driving through a ton of winter weather along the way.
We waster no time soaking a towel in pedialyte and getting them Stowed away.
When the moving truck arrived in Arizona the first thing off the truck was my vehicle. We weren't sure if they were dead or alive. It turned out they had gone into a deep state of hibernation from being cold but they survived!
The guy who was our truck driver two years later to move us back to the East Coast absolutely emphatically would not allow us to put the aquarium in the car, for the ride home. Luckily our daughter science teacher agreed to give them a home !
We paid the driver $200 over his tip.
Not 300.
#2.
Totally true.
Let's just say this poor girl who worked at my grocery store had an extremely unfortunate feminine situation while working and their uniform pants were a light color. I found her crying in the bathroom.
She was an only kid, said she didn't have "hardly any friends" , did not have a car, and her single mom was at work and had the kind of job where she could not leave.
I told the girl I would go find a female member of management and that we would bring her a pack of baby wipes and a sweatshirt or something that she could wrap around her waist. I had a plan!
We went out to my car and she climbed into the backseat and got undressed and cleaned up. I took off my similarly colored pants (etc!) in the front seat and handed "everything over" my shoulder.
She put in my clothes and hopped out.
I drove home but passed my driveway and kept going because my neighbor was in his driveway washing his car!
I had to call his wife at work and explain my situation to her so she could call him and lure him into the house long enough for me to get out of my car and run inside.
You better believe I looked all around before getting out!
I soaked her clothes in peroxide and put them in the washer, then the dryer , and had them back to her a few hours later.
#3.
My great grandfather is credited with starting the goldfish craze in America by bringing them back from "the orient".
He bought a big piece of land full of natural ponds in Maryland and stocked them full of baby goldfish he'd bring over to America on steamer ships in barrels. He then sold everything you can imagine that had to do with fish and birds all over the country and I still search for and collect antique ephemera and other things related to his business. He was known as "the bird man".
*side note: he also brought bears, elephants, birds, and monkeys back from his trips for zoos and circuses , and birds for private ownership - which today is terrible but in the late 1800's early 1900's not considered bad.
