I may open a cryogenics lab.

I have a dead goldfish and a very dead hamster in my freezer. I am not joking. The fish has been dead for 2 years and the hamster bit the big one back in the fall. Why, you ask? well, when you have children and they have pets, sometimes you do ridiculous things to comfort them.

Elizabeth spent the summer with my folks about 5 years ago, just after we moved to North Carolina. My mother took her and her brother to the county fair where Liz won a gold fish by tossing a ping pong ball into a bowl. She was very proud of herself. She named the fish Pippin.

Pippin was a nice little fish. Liz took care of him religiously. She kept his bowl very clean, so clean in fact she killed the algae eater we bought to keep Pippin company. The algae eater was named Merry, of course. Merry died after a few weeks, but Pippin carried on for another two years.

Then, Liz decided Pippin was lonely. I don't know how she knew, maybe the fish waved his fin in a Morse code style. Any who, we bought some fish from a pet store. Unfortunately the fish had Ick. It died and so did Pippin. So Pippin was wrapped in a paper towel and put in a Ziploc bag. My mother had him in her freezer for about a year. We found him when we were cleaning out her freezer after she sold her house.

Thus, Pippin made the trip home to our freezer. Where he has been ever since. As for the hamster, she was my son's. Apparently she died and it took him a few days to notice. Although I don't know how he didn't figure it out from the smell!!

I came home and found a note written by my daughter. It went something like this:" Hamsters dead. Boys upset. Gone to school." I opened his door and just about fell over from the dead rodent smell! We wrapped her in a plastic bag and put her in a small box. She sits next to Pippin on the bottom shelf of the freezer.

The other day I opened the freezer and it hit me, if any more of my pets die, I will not have room for my food!