Spencer Gets a Pet

2011.05.02.  Keywords: autism, empathy, pets, caterpillar, moth, identity, polytheism, monotheism, atrocities.

Autism is a funny thing.  Yes, I know, it's a disorder for which we all want to find a cure, and we're all grief-stricken when we discover our little ones have it.  However, once it's in the family, it's there, and the condition makes its host no less lovable and wonderful.  One of autism's common characteristics is that the child will exhibit far less empathy, and therefore is not inclined to have a favorite stuffed animal, or play "parent" with toys or siblings, except perhaps to mimic something he found funny or cool (he will, occasionally, play teacher, and instruct his toys in the fields of automotive or aerospace engineering).  Another quirk is that faces are hard for the autistic to observe, and therefore the role of a person or creature is often more significant than its actual identity.  Spencer had plenty of stuffed animals as a kid, and he did appreciate them to varying degrees, but usually liked to snuggle up to a fire truck, toy train, airplane or space shuttle when going to bed.

The empathy block also comes into play with smaller creatures.  Infants are a constant source of consternation for the little guy.  He tends to lecture them, with the exception of his god-brother Nathan.  Pets have an easier time.  He's always had them.  He doesn't demand they listen to him the way he expects toddlers to.  When he was a baby, his mother and I had three cats and a dog.  After the separation, I kept two cats that had been his mother's, for two years, while she kept the dog and the spare cat.  After she gave away those pets, her original cats returned to her, and she acquired another dog, cat and guinea pig.  I, on the other hand, have kept my home petless since then.  I have terrible pet allergies.

You would think someone with pet allergies would have always lived a relatively petless life.  No.  Being pet-free is a recent (and very soothing) thing for me.  My siblings and I insisted on pets, growing up.  Throughout my youth I was constantly sick, wheezy, asthmatic, with dark circles under my eyes and skin problems.  My first wife had to have two cats.  When one died we had to replace it.  My next partner, with whom I lived for four years, wanted to have two cats, which remained with her when we split.  A third live-in companion of two years not only had a ridiculously furry Himalayan cat, but acquired two more, despite my protests.  And you've already heard about wife #2, Spencer's mom.

So I've been pet and allergy free since 2009, and that's been great for me.  I'm not at all an animal hater--quite the opposite.  In all my relationships I've performed half (or more) of the pet care without being told.  The animals in most cases preferred me to the instigating partner.  I like caring for others, human or not.  I've been nominated as god parent for TEN children from four families in my adult life.  Everyone wants me to raise their kids, let alone animals.  Right now I just want to care for Spencer and an assortment of low-maintenance cacti and snake plants.

"Dad," Spencer asked me last week, "why don't we have pets at your house?"

"Because you have them at mommy's house," I replied.

"But I want one for here, too."

"What would you like to have?"  I had to ask, as his answers are rarely the boilerplate kid answers.

"A bird."

I imagined some flighted creature, damned to perch within a wire prison for the remainder of its skyless life, shrieking in my home and flailing its wings, filling the air with loose feathers and mites.  "Do you think a bird would be happy living inside a house with humans?  What do birds love to do?"

"Fly."

"Can a bird fly very well inside a house?  And where would it poop?"

"It would have to be in a cage."

"If you were a bird, would you be happy living in a cage?"  I asked.

His eyes widened.  "Dad, do you think my guinea pig is happy at mom's house?"

His guinea pig is actually his third, at least.  Like Darren Stevens on Bewitched, the original went away, and the producers brought in a replacement, acting like nothing had happened.  The only ones fooled, of course, would be viewers like Spencer who don't really look at faces.  Every few months Spencer would report that his guinea pig suddenly got a little bigger or smaller, or went from being hyper to very mellow.  Shape-shifting isn't enough to suggest to Spencer that a creature or person in the same role is actually a different person.  He sometimes asks me if two of his teachers who look similar are actually the same person with two jobs.  He's even asked if three of his mom's acquaintances were the same guy with different hairstyles.  Two days ago he gave a gift to Ms. Selby at school, and didn't understand how he didn't also give it to Ms. Ellis, who also is a short, nice, brown lady who helps him.  He knows there's a different name for each face and office, but that doesn't preclude them from being the same person.

Rather than answer his guinea pig question, I rolled back to the original topic.  "What animal do you think we could keep that would be happy in a house?"

"A worm."

"Really?"  That was unexpected.  "Why would a worm be happy living in a house?"  Spencer's replies are best included in a qualitative inquiry, as if you don't make a full sentence out of it, he will often answer "because" to something completely unrelated.

"Instead of living in dirt a worm can live in a clean plastic container."

I saw the logic.  The worm would also have access to television and the Internet.  What sports would a worm follow?  Maybe golf?  Croquet?  Curling?  YouTube could possibly allow a worm to see lawn darts from the topside.

"So can I get a worm?" He pleads.

"Let's talk about this next week.  Right now we have to go to the gym."

We were in the back yard at the time, and before we could go back inside Spencer spotted a very lethargic tent caterpillar on the side of the garage.  "Dad!  Look!  A fuzzy worm!  It's so cute and colorful!"  He had admired this same species the previous week climbing the back door.  "It's the same worm I saw last year!"  (Measurements of time are interchangeable for him.)

"That's a caterpillar, Spencer.  He looks very sleepy.  I think he wants to turn into a butterfly or a moth now.  But he should be under a leaf somewhere.  A bird is going to get him if he stays right there."

"Can he be my pet?  Pleeeeaase!"  He begs, hopefully.

My Insta-No™ mechanism was about to respond, but I realized that he might appreciate a caterpillar every bit as much as a dog, cat or bird.  And to be fair, in my own childhood I doomed dozens of worms, caterpillars, fireflies, grasshoppers and snails to an early death within jars in my bedroom.  I'm not sure if I learned much from these appropriations, but I did get to identify myself as the caretaker of lesser living things.  A tent caterpillar will neither impregnate the upholstery with dander, nor keep us up late with its mating call.  Let it never be said that I denied Spencer a pet!

"OK."

Spencer was thrilled.  He insisted I get a plastic container, but instead I came back with a cleaned-out peanut butter jar, hammer and nail.  Spencer watched with fascination as I pounded a dozen small holes in the lid, and then he ran about the yard gathering grass, clover, sticks and one choice leaf to furnish the cylindrical domicile.

The caterpillar was ensconced, and Spencer proudly and gently escorted the vessel into the house.  He held the jar up high as we walked from living room to kitchen and back, showing the larval moth its new neighborhood.  Spencer placed the jar on the kitchen table, designating that as its official address.  He would eat his meals alongside his new pet.

"What are you going to call your caterpillar?"  I couldn't wait for his answer.  He'd previously named his UglyDoll vampire bat Luigi, and his stuffed pig Moo.

"Stretchy."  No hesitation.

Stretchy thy name shall be.

The next morning Spencer checked on Stretchy.  Still there, but lying on his back at the bottom of the jar, seeming to clutch a blade of grass.  I assumed Stretchy had committed insecticide.  But as Spencer shook the jar, Stretchy squirmed and righted himself.  Looks like Stretchy is sticking around for more bug-human bonding.

While Spencer was at school that day I informed my mother about his new pet, Stretchy.  She laughed for ten minutes, knowing Spencer and his magical-literal hybrid mind, wondering what form of cuddling Spencer applied to his new pet to invoke such a name.  I told her that Stretchy might not be long for this world, and supposed that I would have to run out to the yard and audition a new Darren Stevens before long.

That evening, before Spencer's bedtime, I heard him exclaim, "Dad, Stretchy's gone!"

I hoisted the delabeled Smucker's terrarium and rotated it, seeing no tubular tenant against the glass, nor affixed to any stick.  I didn't see Stretchy's dark, U-shaped form on the bottom side of the lid, either.  The holes in the lid were about 1/3 the diameter of Stretchy's body, so no escape route existed.  Perhaps William, our roommate and older sibling to Spencer's god-brother Nathan, had found Stretchy dead and disposed of him?  That seemed unlikely.

I got a flashlight and shone it into the jar.  The occupant seemed even more convincingly absent.  Then I noticed a white haze near the lid.  The underside of the lid itself is white.  There, on the ceiling of the jar, was a fuzzy, webbed sleeping bag, which contained Stretchy, of course.  I was happy to inform Spencer that Stretchy had made himself a conversion chamber, out of which he would emerge a [very ugly and unspectacular] winged moth.

Great.  His pet will change into another creature and still be the same pet.  This is going to throw a monkey wrench into the logic I keep trying to reinforce--that humans with different faces are separate humans.  I guess the concept of the Trinity my mother told him works in the same way, which he readily absorbed.  Maybe he's also been told that after death, people live like [winged] angels with God, not unlike caterpillar metamorphosis.  Mom would probably be horrified to learn that Spencer is actually a polytheist, embracing not only the God of Abraham and Paul, but also the pantheons of Greece, Rome, India, China, Native America, Scandinavia, Africa, ancient Egypt and Japan.  He recently asked a blessing for a picnic lunch, thanking Jesus for the pizza and cookie, and then Bacchus for the grape juice drink box, I kid you not (he learned about Bacchus from the Pastoral Symphony section of Fantasia).  His girlfriend Imaan worships Allah, Grandma prays to Jesus, King Tut prayed to Ra the Sun God, and some in his community have told him that all gods are versions of the same god.  That clicks for him.  One being having numerous manifestations makes more sense to Spencer than individuality does to you and me.  Maybe this is just one concept he's not going to grasp until he's an adult, if ever.

Spencer's innocent polytheism is something I can't rationally discourage.  His own studies of other cultures have made him aware that humans have devoutly observed and labored on behalf of tens of thousands of immortals, most of them now forgotten.  If identity itself is liquid to Spencer, and I can't convince him that humans and insects, let alone these invisible deities, are all individuals, how am I to insist that only one deity is legit?  No single deity is agreed upon by the majority of humans, and monotheism doesn't make sense to him, as he knows full well that various nations have embraced various families of gods throughout history.  He's sure they're all still out there, up there.  By his embracing of all, he's unlikely to ever shun, harass, or commit an atrocity against another human based on religious or cultural differences.

When Stretchy emerges with wings, I'll make an announcement.

- - - - -

UPDATE:  May 14, 2011.  Stretchy has been in his coccoon for weeks now, and with time the sac has become more compact, and a dusty residue seems to fall from it.  I find it hard to believe anything is alive in there.  Fearing fungal contamination, I have dumped the wilted vegetation out of the jar and replaced it, but I don't think Stretchy is still with us.  I should probably scrape him out and put the jar in the recycling bin.

 
UPDATE:  May 15, 2011.  Good golly.  I told Spencer Stretchy had died.  In response he asked me to do something I would have never considered--cut open the chrysalis so he can see Stretchy's corpse.  Seemed like a healthy curiosity worth pursuing.  I got a sharp knife and carefully made an incision along the top of the silk tent, trying to avoid slicing into Stretchy.  [A coccoon is a surprisingly strong, tightly-woven fabric!]  There within the sac we could see a fuzzy brown segment that appeared to be a thorax.

"Poor Stretchy," Spencer sighed, then walked away.

I softly touched Stretchy's body with the tip of the knife, and he undullated reactively.  "Whoa!  Hey, Spencer," I called, "Stretchy's alive!"

Spencer didn't respond, which is typical.  He began putting together Legos.

"Spencer, did you hear what I just said?"

Spencer puts a few more blocks together, then looks up blankly.  "What did you said, dad?"  [He uses duplicate indicators in the past tense.]

"Stretchy is not dead!  He is moving!  Come here and see!"

Spencer returned and observed as I made Stretchy squirm again.  "Is this a joke, dad?  Why did he move?"

"Because he is not dead," I repeated.  He is alive."  Spencer was still hanging on to my declaration that Stretchy had died, and seeing him move didn't fully convey the concept of life to the little guy.

"So you were wrong?" He fathomed.

"Yes, Spencer.  I was wrong.  Stretchy did not die.  He has been alive this whole time, and he is alive now.  I made a mistake when I said he was dead.  I'm glad you asked me to cut open the cocoon, because it showed me he was still alive."

"So he is still going to turn into a butterfly?"

"He's going to turn into a moth."  I asserted.

"No, I think it will be a butterfly, because Stretchy was a colorful catepillar."

"Sometimes pretty caterpillars turn into brown or gray moths.  Sometimes boring caterpillars turn into colorful butterflies.  The color of the caterpillar doesn't decide the color of the moth or butterfly."

"Stretchy is going to be a butterfly," he insisted.

"No, Spencer.  I looked up Stretchy's kind of caterpillar, and he's going to be a little brown moth.  Does that disappoint you?"

"No, because I love Stretchy no matter what he looks like."

 
UPDATE:  May 17, 2011.  Spencer had just put on his pajamas when I decided to check on his pet.  I was worried that by opening the silk wrapper Stretchy would dehydrate.  Perhaps he'd need two or three more weeks without water, and the cocoon's function is to preserve moisture during the transformation.  I kept thinking I should somehow reseal the top of the cocoon, but how?  Besides, I'm super-busy, and it's just a dang insect.

But wait!  There were several droplets of brown liquid on the bottom of Stretchy's jar.  Rust water?  Did something leak through the lid's nail holes?  I opened the lid, and as I raised it there was something brown hanging from the opened cocoon.  It was a moth!

"Spencer, Stretchy has come out of his cocoon!  He's a moth now!"

Sure enough, Stretchy was dangling from the used-up-looking sac.  He seemed to be stuck, or accidentally glued to it.  He didn't look well, but neither would I after more than two weeks in a sleeping bag without water (must be a whole year in moth time).  Spencer stared at the dangling insect for five seconds, then began jumping around, cheering for Stretchy's success.

"We should take the jar outside so he can fly away and find water and other moth buddies."  I advised.

"Yes," he agreed.  "Time to let Stretchy go.  I will get the love bell."

The "love bell" is a hand-made, copper, Tibetan prayer bell that I gave Jessica (my life partner) for Christmas in 2007.  It's one of two bells, tuned a major 9th apart, which we sometimes ring when either of us wants to commemorate a moment.  It's been a fantastic ritual for Spencer over the last several years.  The bells are shaped like little bowls, which are held in one's open palm when rung, and with the wooden hammers resemble a mortar-and-pestle.  Spencer named these "the love bells" when he was four.  Spencer rings a bell to "send love" to people far away, express his sincerity for a promise, or appreciation for a lesson learned.  To him ringing that bell conveys the sacredness of something intangible, and always positive.

We marched outside onto the deck and set the opened jar on a post along the railings.

DIIIIIINNG!  "I'm so glad you are a moth now, Stretchy," Spencer declared.

DIIIIIINNG!  "May you be safe and not eaten by a bat tonight."

DIIIIIINNG!  "Or a bird tomorrow."

DIIIIIINNG!  "Don't forget me.  OK, I'm going to give you privacy now.  Bye, Stretchy.  Good luck."

We returned to the living room and I shut and locked the back door.  An hour later Spencer was asleep in his bed.  I went out to check on Stretchy, and he was no longer in the jar.  I looked around and saw a little brown moth on the side of the house, near the glowing exterior light.  Knowing the hungry moth would be unproductive next to the light, and a target for predators, I went back inside and turned off the light.

The next morning I told Spencer about Stretchy's successful departure.  He was happy and proud.  Thus ends a most satisfying, easy, brief and cheap pet ownership experience.

 
UPDATE:  June 7, 2011.  It's been weeks since Stretchy's graduation, and Spencer still tells friends and strangers about Stretchy, almost daily.

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