My Cactus, Rarey.

I have a cactus. It is about the only botanical thing I am capable of caring of. When I was 21 I decided I would love to have a Bonsai tree, one that was as old as I was (similar to the Whiskey, which is kind of what I did as an alternative). I once tried growing a Bonsai, but it failed miserably.

Anyway, I am going off track. When I was in primary school we went to the botanical gardens in Birmingham. It was a nice place, with loads of plants, and some really, really big cactuses. I was smaller, and the cactuses looked huge. I thought they would just keep growing until they were killed by something (which wouldn't be lack of water, at least for a while). This scared me a little bit. Even though it scared me, I still wanted to buy two. I bought a traditional long thin one, and one that looked different, I can't properly describe it. I had seen both at the botanical gardens, and both were really big.

I was instantly worried. I now owned these cacti, and had to care for them. I just had vision of them becoming huge, and taking over my house, and then having no garden because they took it all up, and my family been really angry. I don't remember telling anyone these fears, but I must have since the teacher followed me out of school to tell my mom that I was really worried, and that I shouldn't be since there won't be a problem.

It sounds quite irrational that I was so worried, but there is a reason.

When I was younger my mom used to tell me a story. The story goes as follows (this is completely from memory, and I am sure there are similar versions):

While out walking in the mountains a man found an egg. It was all alone so the man decided to take it home and care for it. Eventually the egg hatched, but he couldn't recognise the creature inside. It was hairy, a bit like a bear but with aspects of all different animals in it. As it got bigger he knew that this wasn't like any creature seen in the world. Because of this he decided to call it a "Rarey".

The rarey continued to grow, and grow, and grow. It didn't stop. The man was getting worried. It was becoming hard to keep it in his house. It had gotten so big, and was so unusual that he knew if anybody noticed it they would take it away from him, and probably experiment. The man was worried for the rarey's life.

One day the rarey had gotten so big, bigger than the man, that he decided he had to do the most humane thing he could think of, and kill it quickly before anybody managed to get it. He took the rarey to the place where he found it, in the mountains. He grabbed a stick and threw it off the side off the side of a really high cliff. The rarey ran at it, but stopped just before the cliff. He tried this a couple of times, to no avail. The man had to change his plan. He told the rarey to look over the edge of the cliff, and as he walked forward the man followed. The rarey looked down, and the man was just about to push it, when the rarey turned around, with a big tear in his eye, and said...

"It's a long way to tip a rarey".

The end line has to be sang, to the really popular 1914 song, "It's long, long way to Tipperary".

I had always thought of this, and I pictured the cactus as my Rarey. It isn't entirely untrue though, the cactus started off being about 3" tall, and now look at it!

Sadly, the plant-like cactus didn't survive due to being knocked over and destroyed by something.