My Dog is Chelsea

I grew up in New York City on the ground floor of a brownstown. This meant we had access to a backyard—a very rare commodity in Manhattan—but since the tall buildings blocked out most of the direct sunlight, we couldn’t have a lawn. Determined to have one anyway, my parents installed a 10×10 green carpet of AstroTurf in lieu of actual grass.

My younger brother and I spent countless summer days in the backyard peeling back the corners of the AstroTurf to reveal the paths and tunnels carved by ants—I mean, really, who needs an ant farm when you can have AstroTurf? I have vague memories of trying to burn those ants with a magnifying glass, though without the requisite direct sunlight our efforts never really amounted to much.

Then one evening, as I was playing with my Cabbage Patch premie, Weiman—wtf kind of name is that?—I noticed an ant crawling into the hole in his mouth intended for his pacifier. Then, the very next day, as I was changing Wieman’s clothes, I noticed the exact same ant crawling next to the Xavier Roberts signature on his butt cheek. Naturally, this was a monumental day in my life as a child—the day I discovered that everybody, even Cabbage Patch Dolls, poops.

Anyway, my brother and I had a fascination with collecting ‘pets’—this was before the days of Chelsea, you see—and we’d gather together jars of whatever we could: mainly ants, fireflies and caterpillars. But ants are boring if they’re not in a lot of dirt, so we usually just left them to dig underneath the AstroTurf, and fireflies are cool when you’re in the park and they’re all lit up, but once you get them home in a jar they never bother to turn on their butt-lights. So, by process of elimination, caterpillars made the best house pets and were our insect of choice—especially since come late summer, there were more caterpillars in our backyard then there were inhabitants on our block.

One year, we collected a whole bunch, gave them each names and then built them a house out of Legos. Mr. X was our favorite, since, somewhat ironically, he was the only identifiable one of the bunch with a string of X’s down his yellow tube of a body.

Unfortunately, we neglected to afix a roof to our caterpillar orphanage, so in the middle of the night they all escaped. We were sad about our loss for several days—despite the fact that caterpillars had now literally infested the apartment and were everywhere—but our spirits were lifted when we finally located Mr. X! That stealth little guy! He had made his way all the way back out to the vast expanse of AstroTurf.

Years later, when we had an actual pet, the yearly caterpillar infestation caused other problems. The exact opposite of me and my brother, Chelsea developed a bizarre obsession with stopping the caterpillars in their tracks. While my brother and I had enjoyed playing with and coddling the caterpillars, Chelsea was focused more on the intrusion aspect and chose, not surprisingly, to ingest them. This meant that every year at the height of caterpillar infestation, Chelsea would spend her days ripping up the ivy in the backyard—as you’ll remember, grass was not an option—in an effort to make herself puke up the caterpillars making her sick on the inside. ‘Twas never a pretty site.

Anyway, no real moral to these stories. Just felt like telling them.