and, after a 2-day haitus...Basil, Girr, Vinyl: Part III" alt="and, after a 2-day haitus...Basil, Girr, Vinyl: Part III" />The second installment of hell’s name was Jason. He had the same angelic/crazy look as Glenn, same dark hair and bright eyes, same penchant for killing our animals. Jason was 6, the same age as Glenn, but he ended up lasting a bit longer in our household. Really, the similarities were so numerous as to blur the memories between these two boys, and make them one being. But I digress…
Jason was with us for about a year. And though he hadn’t a need to walk around at night with a knife, he had the want of pitching fits. And I don’t mean like your normal 6-year-old fit, I mean like a psycho 6-year-old fit. These fits would normally lead to my mom holding Jason down while I called the social worker to get the okay to get him a barbiturate at the hospital. Mom sustained numerous injuries during these fits: bites, chunks of hair being pulled out, scratches on any skin exposed, and bruises in crazy places. The strange thing is when we tried to get Jason into counseling of some sort, the foster family program didn’t want us to get him any help. They just said, “don’t worry about it. He’ll give up these fits in time. He’s really too far gone with it for help now.”
Why the state of California would hand out these kids like little green pills to unsuspecting people is beyond me. Like many, Jason had been either abandoned quickly after birth, or had been abused by his parent(s) until removed from home. He then spent a few years in and out of abusive foster homes. This kid had some serious abandonment issues, as well as a massive chip on his shoulder.
I think that Jason really went nuts after trying to kill our dog. We had 3 dogs at the time: 2 German Shepherds and 1 little mutt. Seriously little. We found Spike Jones (seriously, folks – and nothing to do with the film maker(s) – his full name was Spike Jones Bag O’ Bones) on a busy street near our house one day, playing in traffic. His fur was all matted, and he didn’t have a nametag, so being the animal lover my mother is, we took him right in. Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of Spike’s; he was a mangy little dog, and I’m not big on little dogs.
Jason decided that he didn’t like this dog enough to toss him off of the back porch. Like a windup in a softball pitching mound, Jason took Spike by the back leg, swung him around a few times, and let him fly off in the distance. Amazingly, the dog got off with a broken leg – he had to walk around for a month with a cast. Within that month, Jason was back at the children’s home.
We left Jason at the children’s home for about a month to be in pretty much a lockup situation. He was confined to his room most of the day. He had counseling twice a day. This kid had the counselors eating out of his hand. They thought he was just a great little boy, a diamond in the rough. He came back to our home after this hiatus, and seemed to be just fine for about 3 weeks. After that, he killed off yet 2 more of our chickens. We had to let this one go.
Total time Jason spent living with us: approx. 1 year. Total time for Glenn: 5 months. Chickens killed by Jason: 3. Chickens killed by Glenn: 5. Chickens killed by chicken hawk and a really bad wind storm: 6. Chickens left after everything: 0. Help provided by the California Children’s Network: none, in any case.
