When I was in middle school, I had a dog, and this dog was a total trainwreck. It was my fault, really. I named her Deion Sanders due to lightning speed, but like the greatest cornerback of all-time, the bitch ultimately proved uncontrollable. Biting some douche bag down the street, destroying my dad’s favorite chair, Deion Sanders swaggered around the house like she owned the place until the real leader of the pack had enough. One day my father picked me up from a birthday party and before I even sat down in the car said, “I killed your dog.” Amidst my sobs he calmly said, “I did what had to be done.” I haven’t owned a pet since, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally fantasize about the prospect. Not rationally, of course.
I don’t want a dog. I tried that once and my dad murdered her. I don’t want a cat either. They’re too selfish and all too often seem to have a direct correlation with sadness and isolationist life choices. Gerbils are creepy, ferrets smell like wet garbage and there’s been too many sketchy depictions of snakes in popular culture. Yes, I’m looking at you, king from that animated Disney Robin Hood. My experiences with animals have just been too traumatic up to this point to settle for anything less than the perfect pet, which is why I only lust after ones I can’t possibly have. I want a hippo or better yet, I want that sassy hippo from Madagascar. I want Dante’s lion in Grandma’s Boy. Hell, some of the pets I want aren’t even real. No, not like unicorns or that stupid-looking dragon in Pete’s Dragon. I want something cool. I want badass characters I’ve seen in movies. When I lumber up to the party riding atop Sulley Sullivan’s hulking blue shoulders, I want everyone to turn and shout, “My God, who is that crazy bastard?”
Sunday is Halloween, and as you know, Halloween is, yes, about horror movies, but more than that, it’s about unleashing the unnatural. It’s about embodying someone else and partying amidst a ghoulish presence. Adopting an imaginary animal would be cool enough any day of the year, but on Halloween, it’s somehow even cooler. So, in honor the Devil’s Cinco De Mayo, I’m proud to bring you my all-time, top-6 most wanted fictional pets. Some of them are pure evil, others are just misunderstood, but all of them would kick the shit out of The Sandlot’s Hercules.
Grawp from Harry Potter
I’d like to be able to describe any future pet I have with phrases like “might understand human emotion” and “able to swallow food thrown out windows”. Grawp checks both of those things off my list and at over sixteen feet tall, I’d no longer have to risk my neck cleaning out gutters. Perhaps more importantly, his trust would also be easy to win as he would be the only giant in a fifty mile radius, and my kind reassurances would calm the inferiority complex those bastards gave him. I’m a bit concerned about what might happen if his family came to visit, as his mother is a rather scary, uncouth woman and his brother is one of the few people with a better beard than mine, but we’d likely get over these minor issues with a game of Catch Phrase. Have you ever seen anyone in a bad mood playing Catch Phrase? That’s what I thought, though Grawp’s poor English would require his being on not my team.
Winged Monkeys From The Wizard Of Oz
The Wicked Witch of the West at one time had an entire army of these bastards at her disposal, mean-spirited and adept at following orders, but things went Southward for that harlot and now there’s a whole brood hanging out somewhere. I tried the animal shelter but no such luck. Maybe they were playing it coy, then again maybe I need to go to Oz myself to drop a few bananas down as bait. Now, it’s important to note I did not say I wanted a winged monkey. I need winged monkeys in order to carry out my plan. If all goes well, they’ll be like a well-trained air force unit not bound by the meddling Geneva Convention. We would totally win next year’s WWE Survivor Series.
Classic Cookie Monster from Sesame Street
Today’s version of cookie monster is weak and neutered. Espousing idiotic nutritional opinions like “cookies are a sometimes food”, it’s like he’s not even the same uncontrollable blue hellion anymore. But classic Cookie Monster, that hungry hungry heathen, ate his way into my heart. He can move into my garage anytime. I figure that place hasn’t been cleaned in years. I’ll just scatter a few cookies around and all the junk will be gone by morning. It’s win-win. Besides, how much fun would we have handing out candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween? Would you really grab chocolate out of a bowl Cookie Monster was holding? That’s why he never went to Kindergarten. It involved too much sharing.
Chucky from Child’s Play
Yes, there’s a chance Chucky would kill me immediately after I took him out of the box. Then again, there’s also a chance he’s mellowed out enough to join forces with me on a sick road trip to scare the hell out of my arch nemesis. It’s a gamble I’m willing to take. Imagine the options if you had a less homicidal Chucky at your disposal. Sure, things would get out of hand now and again and you might end up hiding a few dead bodies in the sewer, but none of these arrangements are perfect. Life is about give and take. He’d frighten the BeJesus out of all of my friends, and I’d look the other way when he tried to murder one of my nephews. He just wants a real body. Is that so much to ask?
Treebeard From Lord Of The Rings
At least three times more intelligent than anyone else on this list, Treebeard is a philosophizing, fourteen foot tall badass with a capability to destroy nearly anything, or anyone, with one swipe of his mighty root structure. Don’t worry about Olive Garden telling this forested nightmare your table will be ready in fifteen to twenty minutes. Shit would get done if I had a talking tree for a pet, and if we could figure out a way to carry a giant boombox around with us, nothing would stand in our way as that score from the Battle of Isengard blared and every woman in the club knew without question we were both DTF. It’s been along time since the Entwives were around to please the big man.
Jabba The Hutt from Star Wars
Weighing in at multiple tons, Jabba The Hutt may be a ruthless gangster, but that fatass would definitely be down for trick or treating. Who cares if he’s well over six hundred at this point? Are you gonna tell Jabba The Hutt he’s too old for fun-sized Snickers’ bars? That’s what I thought. We’d roam the streets, freezing pumpkins and placing bounties on people’s heads, all because we can. Yeah, I know he’s not always excited about moving around, but if we dressed a few kids up as Han Solo, it would all work out in the end. According to Wikipedia, his interests include gambling, slave girls and torture, which certainly would work out well for me on the weekends my girlfriend went home to see her family.
