Little Barry & the Pet Shop -- An Excerpt

by Tina Jens
(with lots of help from my niece, Jessica Stanley, age 8)

Little Barry was 5 years old, and it was with wide eyes that he looked around the pet shop for his birthday present.

"You can have any pet you want," Mother had said, after he blew the candles out on his cake.

His friends had "oohed" in wonder, wishing they had a mom as cool as his. He was determined to live up to the challenge of picking the coolest pet in the store.

Mother gave his hand a reassuring squeeze as they started down the first row. Two walls of fish tanks towered high above his head. His mom picked him up so he might see the big fish blowing bubbles in the top row. There were big brown catfish, with whiskers longer and sharper than kittens', zebra-striped angel fish that seemed to bob rather than swim. There were koi, with puffy bugged eyes. But little Barry wasn't interested in fish.

"What about the little neons?" Mother exclaimed. "They look like they'd glow in the dark!"

"Not 'citin' 'nuff," Barry said.

"Enunciate please. Remember what your teacher said," Mother scolded.

Little Barry frowned. It wasn't fair to have to practice school stuff on a Saturday. But obediently, he moved his lips in exaggerated motions and drew the syllables out, "It's not ex-cit-ting e-nuh-fuh."

He pointed toward the next aisle. It too was filled with aquariums, but now sun lamps flooded the tanks with light. Silver and green snakes, no bigger than pencils, coiled around branches, darting forked tongues out to taste the air.

"Goodness!" said mother. "I hope the lids are on tight!"

Next to the snakes, pink and brown salamanders plopped wetly through an artificial bog, their feet splayed out awkwardly, as if they were trying to tiptoe while straddling a wide log.

Mutely, little Barry shook his head. Mother breathed a sigh of relief.

A lemon-lime-colored iguana stood up on its hind legs, its long tail flipping back and forth to balance him as he tried to climb out of the tank. Little Barry hurried past. Kent, the neighborhood bully, had an iguana; Barry was old enough to know that neither he nor the lizard would live very long if he came home with an iguana, too.

In the next aisle were cats and dogs, but the furry white kittens held no allure for him. They made Barry sneeze. A lot. And Patch was chained in the backyard at home, from his brother's trip to the pet shop two years ago. Not 'citing at all, to come home with the very same pet.

Little Barry slipped his hand out of Mother's, so he could explore out from under her watchful gaze. A glass box sat at the end of the aisle filled with cedar chips. In it, a pygmy hedgehog bustled around. The black body and white prickly quills gave it a salt-and-pepper look. It was round as a ball. It might roll faster than it waddled, but the quills would get stuck in the ground, Little Barry supposed. It was certainly odd; he could imagine his friends oohing and ahhing over it. But he could also imagine those quills pricking his fingers every time he tried to pick the creature up.

"Too many owwies," Little Barry said.

Next to the hedgehog playpen was a door with a big red sign. Barry sounded the words out. No En—tran—ce. Em—plo—yees On—ly.

Little Barry didn't know what employees were, but he knew what the sign meant. It was just like the bookstore that his big cousin Bob took him to. He'd park Little Barry in front of the comics then go into a back room just for grownups. That was okay. Little Barry had looked at some of Mother's books and grownup books were boring. But a pet shop was for kids!

"Shouldn't be 'dults only room," Little Barry said with conviction.

He grasped the silver knob in both hands and twisted with all his might. He heard a click and the door eased open.

A dark room stretched out before him, reaching far beyond the walls of the building which housed the pet shop. To his right, a swamp bubbled and burped gas. To his left, a cockatoo screeched from a banana tree in a jungle that dripped from a recent rain. In between, a giant forest whispered and swayed. Little Barry pinched himself to make sure he wasn't having a nightmare or lost in one of his daydreams. He pinched himself because that's what people in his storybooks did. But it didn't make the burpy, drippy, whispery world go away. It only made his arm hurt. He sighed and looked behind him, not so certain he wanted to explore this room any more. But the door had gone away....

If you'd like to read the rest of the story, you can order the book Tails from the Pet Shop from Twilight Tales or order Feathers, Fins and Fur at your favorite bookstore.

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