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[little-things-i-remember]

The butterfly museum

When I was little we used to go to the strong museum, inside they had this big terrarium looking thing, I looked really pretty from the outside, full of tropical plants and stuff. It was expensive to get in though so we almost never went in.

One time I had begged my mom to go in and eventually she gave in. She paid for the tickets and me, my mom, and some other people entered the greenhouse.

It was super warm and humid. Which was nice considering outside it was damp and cold. Right next to the entrance was a little fish pond with kio fish and turtles, there was a little stone path going around the greenhouse and there were Butterflies everywhere. At one point I had like 5 different kinds of Butterflies on me. It was so cool.

I really want to go in there again

[little-things-i-remember]

Arcadia natinal park

There's this national park in maine near when I stay called Arcadia. One the drive up the mountain it started raining, and the higher we got the more foggy it got. Eventually we reached the top and instead of a beautiful view of the town and the harbor there was a grey abyss. You could barley see 5 feet in front of you.

Now I'm from a place that rarely gets a light fog, so me and my brothers thought this was the coolest fucking thing ever. We were jumping out of the fog st each other from behind, we played hide and seek, and tag, which was dangerous to play on a mountain with jagged rocks and cliffs when you literally could not see where you were going but to us that was all part of the fun. Obviously we fell a bunch and got pretty beat up but kids are pretty much immune to Pain if they're having fun.

My parents were pretty dissapointed with the fog though and called us back after about an hour and a half, originally they were gonna tell us we had 10 more minutes but after they saw the state of us (dripping wet, muddy, and bleeding) we left.

A couple years later we went back to the park and this time there were blue skies. The view was in fact really nice unfortunately I only have 2 pictures there and they're not even of the good part of the veiw lol

[little-things-i-remember]

Master List

Little memories

Dad💜

Rest stop🐖

Constellation dome🌌

Arcadia national park🌲

The butterfly museum🦋

Longer memories

Maine🌿

Cruse🌊

Taco bell🌮

Other

Summer imagine ☀️

Pets I've had part 1🐈‍⬛

Pets I've had part 2🦎

Disclaimer: im not a writer by any means but I wanted to write down some of my nice memories so i don't forget them, and maybe so other people can enjoy them.

[little-things-i-remember]

All the pets I've had part 2

Part 1

Pumpkin, a beautiful orange tabby cat that would not stop coming to our house, he was such a lapcat, I have never met a cat that was more snuggly then he was. As soon as you sat down he would plop himself in your lap and start purring like crazy. Unfortunately we found out he had an owner that was unwilling to give him up, they claimed he stayed in the garrage, and would be gone for days at a time. He would come to our door and meow until someone came out, he would be outside our door in the middle of november when it was below freezing and I would sit out there with him with a blanket until I couldn't feel my fingers. (It would also be dark by that point) We stopped seeing him the first time it snowed. I hope he didn't freeze or get hit by a car.

Baby, she has a pretty wild story. A lady came into my dad's workplace one day and told him she was moving out and into a apartment that didn't allow pets, she said if no one took her she was going to abandon her, so of course my dad took her. The lady brought the cat in the next day in a dufflebag, nothing else, no medical records, no food, nothing just the cat and a duffle bag. She stayed in my room for a month and a half so we could try to slowly introduce her to the other cats (Lloyd and scribbles) unfortunately she didn't get along with them, she started peeing around the house and scribbles kept attacking her. We ended up putting her up for adoption on adoptapet.com and a nice ollage student ended up adopting her. She's had no problems with her. I hated giving her up because she stayed in my room for so long I got attached, she was super cuddly too and looked to lay on you and kneed. We had her for about 5 months and tried everything to help calm her down and get along with the other cats but nothing worked.

Other:

I've had a tone of beta fish in the past, I don't remember all their names but I really loved them.

We've nused a few baby birds that fell out of their nests including a baby Stirling, a baby Goldfinch, and a baby crow.

The crow army I had that would be here waiting for their penuts and other food every time I came home from school.

The goldfish I had that canablized each other

Honorable mentions/pets my dad had in maine

A baby skunk that liked tp sleep in my dad's black and white shoes. My dad almost stepped on him when he when to put on his shoes once and it sprayed him.

The baby fox who's mom got run over that my dad and Grammy fed and for a while until he stopped coming around. Pretty sure there's a book about it but I can't remember what it's called.

I don't know the story here but they had a bunch of baby raccoons.

2 Ferrets that roamed the house and liked to play with his dogs.

2 baby harbor seals, I remember him telling me how he had one under each arm.

I know there's more but I can't remember.

More pictures:

[little-things-i-remember]

All the pets I've had

(That I can remember)

Imma go kinda in order here

Greeny, a green anole, and Mona Lisa, a cat. I don't remember very much about them other then greeny liked to hang our on you arm and look out the window, and Mona would greet you every time you walked in the door, I remember when she had to be put down (diabetes) and we buried her the backyard, I didn't really understand whst was happening at the time.

We didn't have any pets for a while after Mona and greeny died because my parents were really attached to her and I think it really hurt them when she died, I was too young to understand death at the time.

Lary, a massive crawfish we found at a park, he pinched my dad once when he was cleaning the tank and drew blood, I don't remember a lot about him.

Jasper, a stray cat that never came into our house but we fed and pet and played with him until he stopped coming around. He liked to bring us dead moles.

My brothers fishtank with a bunch of Carnival goldfish that survived several years, plus some of the smallest crawfish I've ever seen. They liked to peak out of the tinny doorways of the little castle that was in there. We also kept bullfrog tadpoles in there until they turned into frogs.

Coily, a small northern red belly snake we smuggled back from Maine without my mom knowing (she's terrified of snakes) he was the cutest thing, real small maybe like 6 inches? These Snakes don't really have teeth just kinda hard gums like lizards so instead of biting people when scared he would flip over, show his red belly, and play dead. Literally the least scary snake to exist. I loved him so much. I have a picture of him curled around a bow on my bathing suit. He ended up getting out of his cage (to this day I have no fucking clue how) and he was gone for a couple days. My mom got out of work at like 2 am one day and found him curled up in the doorway to my room, I was at a sleepover and my dad was in the basement, so my mom had a panic attack and had to "run across the hall to the stairs" as fast as she could, despit this snake being completely harmless. Then next year we had to let him go in maine because my mom did not want him in the house.

Jumpy, a neon tree dragon that was super friendly and I really loved him but he got sick and passed away about a month later.

Scully, and leaf, a green anole and Bahama anole that I had for a while, I barley remember them.

A few years later my dad gave in to my begging and we got another cat, her name was smora and she was absolutely huge (literally 28 pounds). She wasn't really that lovable unless she was feeling sweet. Everytime my dad picked her up she would lick his stubble and not stop, on the rare occasion she would lay on me she would lick my forehead and hair. She was my baby, I loved her so much. She died in November of last year (heart failure, we didn't even know about it until a week befor she had to be put down) It took me a really really long time to get over it. (Still not) we had her Lloyd and scribbles at the same time. Lloyd liked to lay in her bed, one time Lloyd tried to paw at her to get her to move and smora bitch slapped him like 5 times in the face. She was declawed so it probably didn't really hurt him but that was the last time he ever tried to move her.

These next few we had at the same time as smora

The rock, a snapping turtle I found at a park and took home (I was little) he was actually really friendly for a snapping turtle, we kept him until the next summer where we let him go at the same park. I don't remember much about him other then I liked feeding him.

Diamond and spot, 2 leopard geckos that were given to us by one of my dads friends who couldn't take care of them anymore, they were fully grown when we got them and don't know how old they were, but they were so cute, I loved their eyes, and I loved holding them. Leopard geckos are pretty much blind to anything other then light and movement so they were kinda dumb. as the got older they started having shedding problems and stopped eating, Eventually they died. It was really sad to watch.

Spike, my other brothers bearded dragon we got from a reptile expo. He's a big boy.

Kōsei, a crested gecko I got from petco, he was really cool I loved how his feet felt when he crawled on you.

Mine turtle, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2 painted turtle we got from a neighbors pond and kept for a year befor putting them back in their pond. This is the only picture I can find of them and it's just mine turtle, plus a frog.

In the same pond we grabbed a bunch of frog eggs and watched them develop, they hatched like overnight and we got tons of tiny tadpoles that grew super quick, when they started growing their arms and legs we put them In a little man made pond in our garden so when they turned into frogs they could go into the creek that was about 20 feet away. That year the creek was filled with leopard frogs, evertime you moved like 3 would jump in the water.

Lloyd, another massive cat. His name fits him perfectly, he's very odd. He's the most lovable cat I've ever had, such a good boy. He's about 12 years old at this point and he's so funny. He likes chips and whenever he hears you eating them he paws at your hand till he gets some. If youre in his spot on the bed he'll poke at you till you move. His claws are huge but if your playing with him and he claws at you he feels bad and won't use his claws to play for the rest of the time. Whenever you scratch his ears he pushes he head into your hands, he's surprising strong. He loves to be outside especially when it's snowing. We got him from a shelter when they were doing a Halloween special and giving black cats away for free (they said that since grey was just a lighter black we could have him) apparently he'd been brought back like 4 times befor we got him, and i can't understand why, because he's such a sweet old man. My favorite part of him is his big paws.

Darrle, a scarlet millipede I found at a park and took home. He was one of my coolest pets.

Scribbles, a kitten who showed up at our house one day and didn't stop meowing at our door until we let her in. She is so funny. She's the first kitten I've ever had. She likes to steal Nerf balls from under my brothers bed and chase them around the house, when she loses it she just gets another one. If you tell her not to do something she'll look you in the eyes and do it. Contrary to Lloyd she never learned to play nice, so if you play with her with your hands there will be blood, lots of it. She likes to snuggle against your legs, and occasionally she'll lay on you. She likes to be carried around like a princess and if you try to put her down she'll bite at you. She likes to chase and be chased so careful running around the house. She likes to try to play with Lloyd by tackling him, he just lays there unfazed. A few nights after she moved in another cat came to our door we let her in but once she saw scribbles she booked it towards the door and left. She looked just like scribbles so we think someone's cat had a litter of kittens and the owner dumped them.

There's gonna be a part 2 cause I'm at my picture limit

[little-things-i-remember]

Not a memory but something I really want right now But can't have because it's like 10 degrees below 0 here.

An endless grey highway stretches as far as the eye can see. you've driven through cornfields, alongside rivers, and occasionally through small towns.

The sun is going down behind you, it casts bright orange rays on your shoulders and warms your skin.

All the windows are rolled down, warm summer air fills the car. your hair whips around your head and brushes against tanned skin. You can faintly smell the farmland you passed just a little while ago.

You shout along to the almost deafening music playing on the radio, you can feel the vibrations of the bass as you grip the steering wheel.

You have no destination. You stop for anything and everything you think is interesting, no matter how small.

When the sun has disappeared below the horizon, and the land around you is bathed in darkness, youll pull over to the side of the road and lay on the hood of your car watching the stars, and wishing on chunks of space rock burning up in the atmosphere. You've turned the music down so that it's just loud enough for you to hear.

Soon enough your eyes get heavy and you fall asleep on the air mattress that's blown up in your back seat.

Everything is perfect.

Fuck winter, this is all I want right now.

[little-things-i-remember]

It takes just under 24 hours to get to maine from where I live, we used to take breaks and stay at motels during our drive, but now that we're older we just drive there in one shot, no hotels or campsites, just driving for 20 odd hours.

I think my favorite part of the drive besides looking out the window and listening to music, is stopping at rest stops in the middle of the night. Those middle of nowhere rest stops with a gas station, restrooms, and sometimes a McDonald's or Starbucks. They always feel so weird, but in a good way.

These rest stops almost always have gumball and claw machines and i remember one specific claw machine that was just full of pig sqeaky toys and I just had to win one. now something you have to understand about me is that I'm really good a claw machines, I've won something out of almost every claw machine I've tried, so obviously I won one of those pigs, and it was pretty much what you expected, a realist medium sized squeaky pig, that might actually be a dog toy, and decided one was not enough, so I got 4 of them, and they sit on a shelf in my room, and stare at me in my sleep, theyre kinda like a reminder of the weird feeling you get from being alone in a reststop.

[little-things-i-remember]

I went on a Cruse once, it was cheaper then going to Disneyland and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had.

You leave from a port in Florida and you travel through the open ocean for a couple days, every so often they'll remind you of the depth, 10,000 feet, 15,000 feet 60,000 feet. You'll watch movies playing on the dock in front of the pool, you'll eat the delicious food that you don't have to pay for because it was included in the price of the Cruse. You'll gamble in the casino, and you'll watch the flying fish jump around the ship, and you'll watch the sunset at the taile of the ship as distant music plays from the front of the ship.

Eventually you'll get to an island, and youll go on an excusion and you'll swim in the clearest, bluest ocean you've ever seen, and you'll bury your feet in the whitest, softest sand you've ever felt. then you go snorkeling around a reef and see all the colorful fish you've only ever seen in an aquarium or on animal planet. then you'll swim over the drop off next to the reef, and you'll feel so small when you swim above the big blue abyss, and you start feeling scared because anything could be down there, but that doesn't matter because you have to swim down as far as you can to impress your brothers. Or you'll go to a shipwreck and swim above it and wonder what it was like to be there when it was sinking, what it felt like, what you thought in that moment, what you would say to your friends, and what you would say to the people you loved. And then you'll go down and try to touch it. you underestimate how deep it was and your losing your breath, and your head is pounding, but you want to touch it, and you do, and shrimp scatter around your hand, and the surface feels rough, and your so proud of yourself, but your headach is getting worse and you need air so you swim up as fast as you can, and you reach the surface and you gasp the biggest breath of air ever, and you feel like shit, but you feel so accomplished. And then you keep looking around the ship, and you'll see the fish scatter and a silver flash and you know what that is cause you've seen finding Nemo, you know it has more interest in those little fish then you, but damn those teeth are scary, so you swim back to where people are. And at the end of all that and you'll get back on the boat, your skin red and covered in dry salt and sand, your hair dry and kinda sticky, and you feel tired and refreshed and you'll feel like you've finally lived.

When you get back on the boat you make your way to the small cabin, that's still homey despite having new residents every week, and you shower, and you get ready for the fanciest dinner you've ever had, that you don't even have to pay for. And then youll sleep.

Sometimes you wake up at 3 am, when the boat is quiet, and almost everyone is sleeping, and you'll go to the dock, and you'll lay on the chairs and look up st the stars, you'll see the edges of the milky way, and you'll see stars you've never even seen before. youll think about your day, and you'll feel your sun-kissed skin, and you'll actually feel alive.

[little-things-i-remember]

Every summer I go to Maine, I stay on a small island with a population of just under 1000, I stay in a house from the 1800s surrounded by old forests across from a beach thats nestled right in the center of a cove. It's not what people would consider a pleasent beach, the sun only peeks through the grey clouds periodically throughout the day, the rocks are rough granite, covered in sharp barnicals that can slice through your skin, the sand is rocky and full of pointy shells that dig into your bare feet, and as you wade through the sea frigid water bites at your skin and slimy seaweed brushes against your legs, sometimes small green crabs pinch your feet. Occasionally you'll even see a red jellyfish and you avoid the seaweed for a while in case it's stingers got stuck it.

But early in the morning, when thick fog still fills the air, and the tide is all the way down, you can go to the very tip of the seaweed covered rocks, rocks are only above water for about 30 minutes a day, you can see some of the life that lives just off shore, baby flounders that you can blend in perfectly with the rocks, sea urchins that nestle themselves between the rocks, sea stars that cling to rocks just above the vanishing point in the water, horn dogs that I've only seen once or twice swimming across the silt, silt you sink knee deep in if you try to step in it, hermit crabs skittering acrossthe bottom looking for bigger shells, small but curious shrimp that will investigate your feet when you stir up the sand and stand completely still, tiny fish that sway with the seaweed, I've heard that they're in the same family as seahorses, sometimes you even find eels under rocks, and sea anemones in tidepools that never drain.

Everyday youll go down to the beach and climb around under the old clam factory to look for sea glass, even though the building is held up by rock stacks and rotting wood stilts. But you'll look anyway because sometimes you find the most beautiful pottery or patterned glass, and you'll wonder how something so beautiful got into the ocean and ended up in your calloused hands.

Sometimes the sun comes out and you get into your bathing suit and swim and play and throw seaweed at your siblings until the sun goes down and your skin is red and peeling.

Sometimes the big chocolate Labrador swims all the way across the cove just to play with you, and you play with him because he's the cutest thing you've ever seen, and youll throw a stick onto the water because he likes to swim to get it, and you'll chase him around the beach even though you get shells stuck in your feet because he likes to be chased and because he's getting old and you don't know if he'll still be around when you come back next year.

Sometimes you'll hear the adults talking about the grave yard that's been swallowed by the forest, and you and your siblings go out to look for it, there's no trails in the woods so you pick a direction and go, and eventually you find the graveyard, it's small and overgrown, but not forgotten because there's a brush hanging from a tree branch and some of the Graves have been cleaned of the moss and lichen and dirt, and you can read the dates and the names and it even tells your their age, some have short messages, May 5th, 1795, Harriet, age 2. After reading the Graves, you wonder what they're life was like, and then, you'll go deeper into the forest and find a crumbling shake surrounded by tall grass, and you would have gone in if your brothers weren't scared and if the island didn't get ticks last year. So you turn around and go back to the house.

You used to drive by fields covered In massive boulders dropped by glaciers, you always wanted to play pretend in the fields, but now they're ticks in the grass and all the boulders have been stacked into piles to be removed by the people who bought the land, and you wish you had just stopped to play in those fields when you still could.

Whenever you go into town across from Fort Knox (not the fort Knox) and you hear stories of the witch's grave, a tall grave that always has a shoe marked out of dirt or something that will always come back no matter how often it's cleaned.

When the sun dips below the sea on the 4th of July everyone makes their way to the pier and you'll light sparkles and write you name with the smoke, and you'll eat fried food, and then you'll sit down on the rocks that have not yet been engulfed by the tide and you'll watch the fireworks, and you'll see their reflections in the water, and you feel the boom deep in your chest, and you hear it echo across the vast ocean.

Not everything in Maine is perfect, it can be cold, and wet, and sometimes when your sleeping you hear scary noises and you'll remember that your the only people for at least a mile. But when the sun comes out, and the tide goes down, and those fireworks boom, everything feels perfect.

[little-things-i-remember]

When I was in elementary school The school would set up this space dome in the middle of the cafeteria, and for about an hour we would go into the dome and someone would teach us about the constellations. I barley remember this but I have a very specific memory about the them telling us about the Andromeda constellation.

They stopped doing this when I was in 3rd grade.

[little-things-i-remember]

I remember when I was little and my brothers had friends over, they usually played on the tv in the living room, so when my dad got home from work and saw the living room tv was occupied he would come to my room and watch tv with me until the kids went to bed, sometimes he would read me his Spiderman comic books.

It was nice.

[little-things-i-remember]

When I still worked at taco bell, I would make little origami things out of our hiring papers, clams, stars, Butterflies, stuff like that. And I would give them to my coworkers, I don't know why, but I made it my mission to give everyone a origami thing. Eventually some people asked me to teach them how to make them, mostly the service people, but one of the food champ boys wanted me to teach him too, so I taught them, and soon there would be little green origami things laying around the store.

I hated my job and quit the week befor Christmas, but I loved the people I worked with. I would train all the new hires (we pretty much got a new one every week) in ether food or service, and people felt comfortable asking me for help or coming to me with questions. I would never make people feel dumb for asking, because I know I hate feeling stupid. It felt nice, being looked up to, and trusted, it felt nice feeling smart, like I knew everything, It felt nice when people asked me to help them carry an heavy soda box, it made me feel strong. It felt nice talking and laughing with my coworkers, who were mostly my age, 17-19, I swear the boys that worked with me were a different breed, the best guys I've ever known. I miss them.

Point is there are little things that made that job just a little more tolerable, like those little questions people decided to asked me, like when people felt comfortable enough to ask me for help, and like those little paper clams, and swans, and Butterflies that sat around the kitchen. There are just little things like that, that I miss.