Picking a Pet

A pet? A pet? What kinda of show makes you pick a superhero pet? I walked into that room filled with creatures and started to sneeze. Anything with fur does that to me. I covered my nose and looked around. Absolutely nothing appealed; I’m not a pet person.

“Pssst!” I heard to my left. I looked around and saw no one. “Pssst!” I felt something crawl on my foot, something heavy. I looked down. “You’re a tall one,” it said.

My eyebrow shot up. “What in the six layers of Hoth are you?”



“What do I look like? I’m a genetically enhanced squirrel, Blondie,” it said, giving me the same look I was giving it. Then it ran up my leg, around my waist, and took a set on my shoulder, looking me right in the eye. I waited to sneeze and I didn’t.

“Listen, you need me, bro. I won’t make you sneeze, I don’t eat much, just nuts. Sometimes a pretzel is nice but whatever. I can fit in your pocket and we can save the day!”

“You don’t look that much like a superhero pet,” I muttered. “What can you do?”

The Squirrel snorted. “Beside being buff and cute? I can chew threw any kind of metal you can think of.”

I snorted and lifted my right arm. “This is durasteel, you can’t chew through this.”

He ran down my arm and looked the metal over, nose wiggling. “Oh, yeah, I can.” Next thing I knew he had bit off my little finger! WTF???!! He looked back up at me with my finger in his mouth. “I hopm youf dodft needh dat.”

“What?”

He dropped my finger. “I hope you didn’t need that.”

“Of course I blasted need it! It’s my FIGNER!”

He twittered. “Sorry.”

“Do you have any idea how long that is going to take to fix that?” I shouted.

He twittered again, and then ran down my chest, down inside my pants and out my boot. Grabbing my finger he shot back up the same way. Ever had a squirrel in your pants? It doesn’t feel good.

Anyway, I was steaming. The squirrel runs back to my hand, whips out a tool kit out of his pocket and started reattaching my finger. I watched him work, I think my mouth was hanging open. When he was finished he looks up.

“You might want to close that, you might swallow a fly,” he said. “See? I’m very…um… handy.” He starts laughing at his own joke.

“Har har,” I said. “Fine. You’ll do. What is your name?”

He takes a long breath. “Francesco Onfroi Renaldo Dumont. But you can call me Ford.”

“I’m Anakin Skywalker.”

Ford snickers. “Anakin? Skywalker? Only two names? What do I call you? AS?”

I rolled my eyes. “Call me Anakin.”

“Okkkkkk.”

“And stay out of my pants.”

“If you say so. No nuts in there anyway.”

What have I got myself into?

Skywalker out.