Anthony likes to remove stickers. We have previously been required to pay a $5.00 fine on a public library book, because he removed the bar-code and we couldn't find it to re-attach. We have had another couple of close calls in that regard as well, so that we start to panic when we realize we have left a book on the dining table or kitchen counter. Taking him to the grocery store is an adventure as well, even if he is not otherwise causing a commotion. He tries to peel stickers off price signs, and can get very upset if we try to stop him; our task then is to try to divert him from noticing the stickers at all.

I had not considered this trait a couple of days ago when I painstakingly planted tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds in a 72-pellet tray and marked them with taped paper. My wife saved me by pointing out that we should turn the tray the opposite way toward the wall so Anthony would not be tempted.


The next day, though, I wasn't as lucky with another of Anthony's obsessions. I was working again with some seeds, and thought I should go to start his bath water. Anthony sometimes hangs around us for as-yet undetermined reasons, and he was doing so in this instance. Instead of following me to the bathroom, however, he stayed in the kitchen. When I returned, I found that my asparagus seeds, which the seed package instructed to immerse in water for a day, had been poured into the sink. The dumping of containers with liquids is one fetish that I don't see very often, precisely because we seldom have open containers with liquids lying around, and so it had not occurred to me that the asparagus seeds might be victims (I did manage to retrieve most of them). I was far more upset a few weeks ago when he emptied a nearly-full gallon of vinegar I was using for cleaning.