Maybe I’ve been away too long.

Five years in New York City is a long time to spend apart from the rural mentality of northeastern Vermont, and when I returned last month I was unprepared for the difference in social law here that determines what does and does not constitute a pet.

New Yorkers really only have one kind of pet. It may be the size of a golf ball or a pickup truck, but all dogs share one thing in common: their owners are required, by law, to pick up their shit with a plastic bag. And it’s worth it, because a New York dog’s primary purpose in life is to get its owner laid. Go to any park in the city and you will see hundreds of happy, carefree single people, romping around with their dogs and their overpriced lattés, chatting flirtatiously about the skyrocketing price of Alpo.

But when two people who meet in the dog park move into a one-bedroom together ($1,700 plus utilities), there’s no room for Fido and Fifi, so the dogs are either given to other needy singles as part of a pet recycling program, or sent directly to the glue factory.

In Vermont, however, anything will pass for a pet. And I’m not talking about farm animals here, which plenty of Vermonters keep to provide the family with something valuable (meat, milk, golden eggs, bribe money, etc.). I’m talking about those who will keep almost any animal in a pen in their front yard for no other reason than animal companionship.

When I was ten, for instance, my grandmother and grandfather, who lived next door, purchased a burro. My grandparents are not trail guides in the Himalayan mountains. They weren’t opening a petting zoo. They simply decided that since they had more than enough cats and dogs, it was probably time to move up to something bigger.

I tried to ride the thing. I mean hey, how cool would it have been to ride a burro to school, hopping down and casually tossing the line around the bike rack as I sauntered into my first period class? But it was not to be; this was not the most disciplined, highly trained animal in the world. My grandmother spoiled the hell out of her, and as a result, whenever I tried to jump on her back (the burro’s, not my grandmother’s), I got the same "you’ve gotta be kidding me" look you’d get from an elderly woman’s poodle if you tried to serve it substandard tenderloin.

It wasn’t long before the first burro "got lonely," and Grandma and Grandpa had to buy another one to keep it company. And these animals are cute as hell, don’t get me wrong, but they eat like elephants and it’s not like, as with other pets, you can sleep with them, unless you’re fond of the living conditions enjoyed by the baby Jesus.

And now that I think about it, my high school girlfriend owned a llama farm. I mean, a God damn llama farm. As far as I remember her family wasn’t making Alpaca sweaters or anything; these were just people with 26 llamas in their backyard, giving no more thought to it than you might to a goldfish bowl in your living room.

I also have an aunt who recently purchased sheep, goats, ducks and chickens - two of each, and all at once. There was probably an idyllic motivation behind this; surely she would be drinking fresh goat’s milk with her morning eggs, wearing a wool sweater and listening to the gentle quacking sound of the ducks overhead as they evaded the neighbor’s shotgun. They won’t just be good company, she must have thought to herself. They’ll be useful, too.

The last time I visited her, she had given the sheep away after just a week because they weren’t getting along with the goats, who had jumped over every fence she’d tried to build and eaten $200 worth of rare flowers. The chickens and geese were content enough, though they looked as if they might start a civil war over control of the water bucket.

What is it that possesses us to try to keep these furry/feathered animals as if they were children, or little animated souvenirs? Well for one thing, they’re just so darn cute. (You don’t see people buying pet sea cucumbers, do you?) They’re just like stuffed animals, and yet these adorable little things can give so much more than a plush toy. After all, can a toy offer companionship? Loyalty? Sensitivity?

On the other hand, will the polyester Minnie Mouse you brought home from Disney World take a dump on your carpet?

But as long as we humans continue to attempt to replicate and contain nature in our self-made universes - particularly with backyards as big as many Vermonters have - we will be trying to force all sorts of animals into this paradigm. And the ironic part is, as much as we’d like to think of ourselves as being in control of and responsible for these animals, it may be more the other way around than we’d care to admit.

Two years ago, for instance, my grandmother (yes, the one with the burros) begged a farmer friend of ours not to send two newborn bulls off to slaughter. "Please," she whined, as a child might beg to keep a mutt who had followed her home. "We can cut off their testicles and they’ll be real strong and I’ll feed them and take care of them and they’ll be useful, because I’ll train them to do farm work and everything, just please please please let me keep them..."

And what do you think happened. They’re all hers, of course, all collective 5,400 pounds of them. And do you think they’ve ever done a lick of hard oxen labor in their lives? Hell no; they’re just like the burros: spoiled rotten. And they know it.

It’s a kind of Matrix-style paradox, isn’t it? The machines need us, and we need the machines. This point was nailed home recently when I was talking to my aunt on the phone and she suddenly had to break the conversation off, shouting urgently,

"...I’ve got to go. My goats are on the balcony."

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