![\"My](\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/134\/377270313_170ce50189.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\nThis is all my pets and they are all awesome. I really love caring for them and making cool enclosures for them like Harley’s Bachelor Pad<\/a>, the above tank basking area<\/a> for the turtles and even finding great deals like Sherman’s new terrarium<\/a>. <\/p>\n I can’t help it, it’s what I love. I’m not a woman who collects 50 pairs of shoes. In fact, I have 2 pairs of summer shoes and 1 pair of winter shoes and that’s it. I’m quite low maintenance in that regard.<\/p>\n Hell, I’m still wearing sweatshirts I wore in high school and I’m 31 years old! Sure I buy new clothes every now and then but I’m not a clothes horse who needs two closets in every room just to accommodate my wardrobe.<\/p>\n I don’t do drugs, I rarely drink and I don’t gamble. I don’t have any interest in expensive jewelry, I don’t blow endless wads of cash out socializing and partying and I don’t spend monthly fees to sit in front of online games anymore (yeah I gave the WoW thing a go again for a week and totally wasn’t into it and quit again).<\/p>\n So what I don’t understand is, why is my love of animals so bad? Why do people I know tell me I don’t need <\/em>anymore pets, poke fun of me because of my ‘zoo’ and encourage me not to bring any more animals into my house?<\/p>\n I take good care of them, they are all healthy and happy. None of my pets are cramped into unfit situations. Quite the contrary really, compared to the average enclosures for animals of their kind, they have palaces.<\/p>\n Ok so it makes it difficult for us to go away or travel because we need to arrange care for them, but don’t children stop people from doing a lot of things too? We may not be able to take off to Spain for a week without making arrangements for them, but at least we can go to a movie or out to dinner in peace whenever we want. Something many parents I know can’t.<\/p>\n I almost feel ashamed when I mention a new addition I’d like to make to our home because people seem to find it unimaginable why I’d want to. For example there is a beautiful turtle hatchling at our local pet store, an Eastern Painted Turtle<\/a> who looks a lot like the hatchling in this photo<\/a> only about 1\/4 the size… but I feel like if I did take him home I wouldn’t want to tell anyone because they’d just sigh and laugh and make their usual jabs.<\/p>\n When one of my girlfriends buys her 56th pair of shoes or her 14th pair of jeans, I don’t tell her she doesn’t need them. Sure, I don’t really understand the need for that many pairs of shoes since I manage to do just fine with the 2-3 pairs I own… but I don’t judge. If it’s what makes them happy then whatever.<\/p>\n I wish the people I know were able to do that as well because it’s so irritating when they poke fun or try to tell me why I don’t need more animals. Of course I don’t NEED them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love to have them.<\/p>\n I can think of a lot more disgusting and harmful ‘addiction’ than the love of animals… so why do I feel so weird about it lately?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a problem. I am completely and utterly addicted to animals… Turtles especially. I can’t get enough of them, every one I see I fall in love with and want to take it home. This is all my pets and they are all awesome. I really love caring for them and making cool enclosures …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","category-the-zoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}