Here's a bit of all the Valcarcel pets:

Let's start off with a bit of the Valcarcel animal pets history.

When my parents were recently married, they still lived in the US. They got a little doggo from the animal shelter, he was so cute! His name was Dave. He was a small, golden dog. They had him for about 2 or 3 weeks, when, all of a sudden, he disappeared. Apparently, he had found a girlfriend or something and he ran away.

About 9-10 years ago, we lived in Granollers (I think). We had a pet fish, who was silver and long. I don't remember what we named him, I must've been 4 or 5. One day, we came back from the prayer meeting at Church, and we found him splattered on the floor. At first, my mom was like, "Ok, who left the plastic fish in the middle of the living room?" Since it was all dark, nobody could tell it was the actual fish, and our live fish looked very much like the one we would play with. When we turned on the lights, we realized our fish had committed suicide! It was a terrible night, really. I don't remember much of it, but I'm sure I cried.

*Warning* there may be some description of insides coming out in this next story. Simply skip the last two or three sentences of this paragraph.

That was the first pet we, as a family, ever had. Next, we moved into the house we're living in now. We got 3 fish. Jemi's was named Haggai, mine was Hello Kitty 2 (I think I had another Hello Kitty before this one, I'm not sure...), and I don't even remember what Josh's was called. We had them for about (hold on, let me consult the family historian (aka, my mom), one sec!)... all right, I'm back. She says we had them for about 6 or 7 months, and we loved them very much. We took turns feeding them, and we would watch as our mom changed the water (we were homeschooled back then). One night, my dad went to get a snack and found them all, in a corner, moving their mouths as though they were having a secret meeting. Well, they met their demise one day too. My brother, Josh, who must've been about 2 or 3, accidentally dumped the entire pot of food inside their tank. Jemi and I didn't notice until the next day, when we walked in on the fish, lying on their tummies, floating on the top of the water, with their guts spilling out. Yes, they had unfortunately exploded after eating too much. Note to self: never eat a lot of food, even if it's good and you think you can.

After those fishies, we never got any more fish. But our parents surprised us one day, when our cousins were over, and called us down for a surprise. Josh was around 5 by this time. Our three cousins were told to step in line behind us, and we were all trying to guess the surprise. As we walked around the corner of the house, we realized it wasn't a what, it was a who! We got a new dog that day, a girl, and we named her Cooper. Why? Well, my dad really loves Mini Coopers, and we didn't want to name her Mini, in case someone called her Minnie Mouse. She likes the name, though. I will add a few pictures at the bottom of this. If you want to, you can scroll all the way down now to see her. We still have her, and now she's almost 8 years old. She was born on February 15th, 2014.

So, we have finally reached the chickens. There is an entire story surrounding them, so sit tight for a few minutes. The first chickens we had, we got them in March 2020. 6 years passed without us having a new pet. We got six chickens. They were named (in birth order of the person they belong to): Herbie (my dad, because he loves the Herbie car from the movie), Harriet (my mom, in honor of Harriet Oleson from Little House on the Prairie, and yes, the chicken was fat), Ginger (my sister, because that was the color the chicken was), Dab-Dab (mine! because we had watched Dr. Dolittle the night before and I really liked the duck), Agent77 (my brother, who started off with Murderer, then Ninja, then ended with Agent77, I don't know what his inspiration was), and last, but not least, Polly, also inspired by the parrot from Dr. Dolittle. She was everyone's, sort of. So, the chickens were rather regular beings. They ate on their own, drank water, and laid eggs. All but one, Ginger. A few months after getting them, in June, we decided Ginger was sick. We had tried feeding her in numerous ways, but she wouldn't move from one spot during the day. We took her to our grandparents' house, where, by then, our then-93-year-old great-grandmother resided, and she cut one of the veins of the chicken's neck and let her bleed out. In a bucket or someplace, I suppose. We were all very sad about it. Then, one night about a month later, we heard a commotion, but we assumed it was nothing. The next day, we found Dab-Dab and Herbie gone. We were all saddened, and tried to find out where they had gone, but only saw a trail of feathers from the coop to the fence and beyond. We thought nothing of it, but a few months later, it happened again. This time, there were feathers everywhere. The coop, the nest, on top of their food, in their water, even on the grass in our yard. The chickens had all disappeared. There is a family picture of them at the bottom of the page.

We bought more chickens ends-of-April-beginnings-of-May, but we only got four. We named them Selkie (mine), Erica Ripley (have you read the Spy School book series? If you have, you'll know why Josh named her this...), Keren-happuch (my sister...), and May. The first chicken died when, in June, my parents were off celebrating my dad's birthday. Jemi stayed home alone, since it was only one night, and Josh and I went to our grandparents' house. During that night, however, at 4.30am, Jemi heard a commotion outside. She went out, armed with a flashlight and Cooper, and scared off... a fox!! Unfortunately, all the chickens had been given quite a scare, so Jemi covered them with a blanket and sat down there with them. She read them Keeper of the Lost Cities (see, books are good for something!) and one by one, they all started coming out. Sadly, one of them didn't. She had been given such a scare, she died. We think she was Jemi's chicken.

In August, we had a couple camps that my parents organize. We left the chickens alone, but our grandma went every couple of days to check on them, clean up the poopies, and pick up the eggs. When we came back from camp, sadly, there was only one chicken left. We cleaned up all the feathers strewn everywhere, and reinforced the fence so that the fox was unable to jump in. To this day, she is still alive, and I believe she's my chicken, Selkie. We're planning to get her some companions soon, in November, I think.

We got two more chickens after that, and as long as I know, they're stilla live! An then, for my birthday, I got a hamster!! She's a girl, all black except from her pink nose and a thin white line running down from her chin down her chest. Her name is Sassy and she was born around November 29th 2021, or so.

I hope you enjoyed this looooong story about our pets! If you think anything can be corrected (and it probably can), tell me in an email you can find on this page. Thank you so much for reading!!!! I will update as soon as we have new chickens.