Ode to an Avocado Plant:
The Perfect House Pet
for an Immature Bachelor

By Matt Lavin

As a 26-year-old bachelor, I've been saying for a long time that I don't plan to buy a real pet until my plants survive. It's never been clear to me how long they have to last before I consider myself ready for something more fragile, but, to be fair, the issue has never come up. In the last three cases, long before I've reached "safe territory," my plants have died horrible, horrible deaths. Before you judge me, know this: at least two of those times, it wasn't my fault.

Flash back to summer 2004. I moved to the Intermountain West to get a master’s degree in American Studies, driving from Saranac Lake, NY to Logan, Utah over the course of four days. Assuming my plants wouldn’t survive the trip, I donated them to my then girlfriend … and her mother. Five months later, she broke up with me, and, although I have no actual information about this event, I naturally assumed that she burned the plants along with photographs of me, and anything else I ever gave her as a gift/present.

Once in Utah, I acquired more plants. Some were gifts, others I procured at local shops. I watered them without incident for almost two years, until March 2005, when a regrettable tragedy rendered their lives forfeit. While I was visiting the University of Iowa to decide if I wanted to attend its PhD program in English, my next-door neighbor back in Utah was arrested for using methamphetamin. They found evidence meth contamination in every apartment, quarantined the entire building, evicted everyone, and destroyed the majority of our belongings. With neither trial nor appeal, my plants were sentenced to death.

Since the incident left me homeless, I soon moved into a new apartment. This event led to housewarming gifts. I received only one plant and set myself to caring for it with Zen like attentiveness. When I moved to Iowa, I even took it with me. However, when Christmas break came along, I realized I would be out of town for three weeks. I watered the plant before leaving, and even set it in a shallow basin of water to increase its chances of living. But when I returned to Iowa, it had died. As I said previously, two of the three weren’t my fault. This last one was all me.

I’ll admit, the last incident rattled my cage. Was I a cold-blooded monster? Perhaps yes, but I didn’t care. I wanted new plants, so I tried to sprout some avocado pits in glasses of water (This effort is not insane. People do it all the time. Read about it here).

Avocado plants, I can say from experience, make the perfect household plant. They need little or no attention, grow under a variety of weather conditions, and emit no hostile odors. They’re also housebroken.

Sadly, my megalomaniacal scheme failed miserably. I set up three avocado pits, but none of them grew. I have this theory that the pits, which I bought at the grocery store weren’t fertile. The lack of sunlight in my apartment may have also contributed.

Maybe I should buy a pet bat. I hear they don’t need much sunlight at all.