When my family read the last blog, they started saying, "What about the snake? What about that seagull?" I realized we had a whole other subset of pets, wild animals who were injured and/or captured by us.
The seagull...Who doesn't find a seagull with a broken wing at Antelope Island and take it to the vet? That's normal, right? All we got for our trouble was an expensive diagnosis: the wing can't be fixed.
We quickly replaced the seagull with a baby bat that one of the cats had injured. It was the cutest rabies carrier ever. In my parents' defense, I'm sure they didn't know my brothers and I were keeping a pet bat in a jar. Another "pet" we acquired courtesy of the cats was a little snake that was paralyzed from the waist down. I'm not sure where the waist is on a snake, but it would drag the back half of its body around the diorama of the American West that we kept it in. It slept in the teepee. I took it to school for extra credit in science.
This one is hard to admit to, because I know raccoons are bad. But our raccoons were so friendly, they would eat Oreos right out of our hands. Again, we dodged the rabies bullet on that one. When the raccoons chewed through my parents' roof a couple of years ago, moved into their upstairs and had babies, it was war. The Critter Gitter came and set cages, trapping several raccoons, a neighbor's cat and Star. Now we don't feed raccoons anymore.
Lastly, the wild pig was one that not even my family could keep. I didn't even know there were wild pigs in this area. It was enormous, and it came out of nowhere and vigorously dug under the cement in our breezeway, breaking a sewer pipe in the process. I probably tried to catch it and keep it in a doll cradle in my room, but it was too fast. It was just as well...imagine what could have happened if it had gotten hold of my zebra finches.
7 comments:
Okay, I thought yesterday was good, this is over the top! You guys really are the best. I can just picture you and your brothers with that bat!
oh my.... I didn't even know all of this?
I might have had second thoughts about marrying Josh he, he...j/k But seriously a bat? And is that why Josh is scared to death of snakes now?
Thanks for the roster of our pets. However, you missed some. We had a fish tank for a couple of years, with dfferent kinds of fish and a fish that stuck to the side with its mouth. That fish ate all the other fish and then died. Probably of indigestion.
Also, the family of skunks preceded the racoons.
For one day someone's horse wandered into the front yard. I know it doesn't count as a pet, just a visitor like the wood peckers and the stuffed bird that's in the library now because dad accidentally shot it.
Okay, I gotta know how did your dad "accidentally" shoot the bird?!
My dad, who grew up on a farm, would never hurt a flea. He puts spiders outside an a napkin instead of killing them. But he used to have a hunting gun because he's a red-blooded American. Since he hardly ever used it, there were two accidents that happened when he shot it off to scare away the woodpeckers who were pecking on our chimney. The first time, he shot a hole in an 8-foot window. The second time, he accidentally shot a woodpecker. He felt so guilty that he had it stuffed and it adorned his home library for years, wings outstretched, perching on a big branch. It was quite pretty.
Yet another good story Circ! William could use your dad and that shotgun. We are plauged by pigeons! course, I don't want a stuffed one is any accidents occur so maybe not!
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