ESL students may enjoy this reading material as the content is a bit unusual. It is factual not fiction. Some of the words and expressions are a challenge but many high school students can handle this.

A Cornucopia of Pets I've Known

Birds
Perhaps I've kept more pets than most. We had our family dogs and cats, a short-lived budgie, and Hammy the hamster. Then in my teens I had a pair of pigeons but they didn't bond to their new hutch/roost. They need to have a youngster or squab for this to happen. The mom and dad literally flew the coop and likely went back to the guy who sold them to me. His bargain!
As I teen living in Scotland, I took up an interest in crows, and checked nests in early spring, before, during, and after the egg laying season. I took a chick to raise at home and my friend did the same a few weeks later. My chick was quite young and not fully feathered. I raised Jackie till he flew away one day. This was a problem. Young crows may not find their way home and I could not fly after the inexperienced juvenile as the parents normally would. I believe it was Jackie I found weeks later near a horse stable. He was spending most of his time on the ground looking for insects and would not let me approach. He did not have much chance of survival as he was alone and another resident family of crows were hostile to him. I really should have left him in his nest or clipped his flight feathers till he matured. My friend Craig had taken a more mature chick and its end was sad. That chick was older when taken from the nest and knew it was a crow. It always reacted with fear to Craig, as if he was a predator. It broke a wing while thrashing and a vet put down the bird before I found out about it. Birds, especially young birds get used to humans if hand fed with patience.

Several years ago I was given a white Meat King variety of chick and it grew fast on my leftovers. Baby kept me company in my private office on the long winter break at university. It may seem strange to keep a chicken as a pet in an office but she did not always have free run of the office. I tied her by the leg to the radiator and she was kept on a flattened cardboard box. With this arrangement I could throw out her dried wastes each week. She was quite an attraction for students. One guy asked me why I had her and I answered "She is my teacher. He answered, "Noooo?" with a very puzzled look on his face, so I finally sent him away to think. My reply finally dawned on him.

Invertebrates
In Newfoundland I kept land snails, big ones with brown and yellow stripes. These eat a lot but they just don't live well indoors. I felt they were sensitive to the indoor warmth of the house, as are earthworms. Later still I found speckled woodlice in my St. John's garden and from these bred pale orange partial-albinos and finally pure white full albinos. Woodlice are known by the name carpenters in Newfoundland and pill bugs or sow bugs in Britain. The two species I had were easy to keep in an open plastic pail. All they needed was vegetable waste and some chalk as their shells are composed of calcium and chitin like shrimp, their relatives in the sea. Bugs are great pets for small children. They are very educational, easily acquired, easily maintained in a fish tank or large bottle and after interest wanes in the young minds can be tipped out in the garden.

Fish
Sure, I kept a few goldfish over the years. From experience I've noticed that as soon as one gets ill the others take a nibble at the fins and this is the slippery slope. Thus, I recommend keeping goldfish alone in a big tank and change only part of the water each week using a siphon. This is a quiet way to clean the tank and less stressful to the animal. Fish don't like too much disturbance in the tank and big changes to the water chemistry. Fresh tap water may be the wrong temperature and still have chlorine so let the water stand a day or so or use anti-chlorine drops. They can live for years and years. My fish ate what I did, meat, vegetables, rice etc.. No special food. I have a lot of affection for goldfish. They have remarkable eyesight and crave attention. I would come home, open the door and from way across a dim room my little Goldie would be sucking and popping at the surface of the tank wriggling up a storm in an excited dance to draw me over. This dance was just like my part-cocker spaniel, Henry, from years before. Goldie was always aware of me in the living room. All I had to do was wave my hand and she would start her dance. She inspired a poem printed by Rural Delivery magazine years ago (Ghoulish Grandchild: see Lessons section). Fish are often smarter than we assume. Tropical Oscars impress me the most, slow attentive, always hungry and very aware. They grow big and live for years. If you have some land try digging a large pond with a backhoe and stocking it with fish. They come to recognize you and come to be fed. I catch bass and sunfish in a river and put these in my large pond to clean out most of the leeches. It works. The fish will also eat tadpoles so you can't have it all.

Rodents & Rabbits
I've had mice, including the new breed, the short-tailed panda mice and they are entertaining to watch but a bit smelly. They do fine in a glass fish tank eating everything you are finished with, from chicken bones to apple cores. I had Guinea Pigs as well but they are noisy, don't you think? That shrill whining of a Guinea Pig....drives me. A warning about Guinea Pigs. If you put a strange male in with a pregnant female he will kill the newborn. The males seem to know which young are not theirs and so they murder them in order to get the female pregnant again. Infanticide by stepfather is common in many animals, so it has been revealed in recent years. I eventually gave away the two Guinea Pigs to a guy who later collapsed and was hospitalized for two weeks. I learned the poor Pigs died at home of dehydration. A pathetic story. I still feel badly about that. Kept rabbits a short while but after they cut every cord and cable in the apt. I had a enough and got rid of them. I had a real pig too a Vietnamese potbelly type and though nice as a baby, after 4 months my female became little more than a sleeping and eating machine with little personality so I gave her away to people in the country.

Reptiles
After I moved away from home I could finally get a snake. Moms usually block us kids-at-heart. Got a 4 ft. African Ball Python in an indirect way. My apt. buddy in Ottawa wanted her but I had the $150 so I bought her till he could pay me back. That snake never bit us but we could tell she didn't like us either, always escaping, hiding in the strangest places. One time we found her under the bathroom sink wrapped around and around the hot water pipe. What a chore to get her off that pipe! She was all resisting muscle. Another time we lost her and could not find her for weeks. Not knowing will drive you crazy. Then my buddy came running into the living room one night saying, "There's something moving in my mattress. Sure enough, she had slid into a small torn hole and was coiled around the springs. This time we had to cut open the box spring. That snake would not not eat, not eat, not for 4 months, even with live mice. She looked like a bag of bones and finally we bought some baby rats and wham, down they went, four in a row. What an amazing rat killer a snake can be. Imagine flowing down into the dark beneath the roots of a great African tree, sensing the rat babies with special pits on the lip, eating all the young, coiling in the nest, awaiting mother rat's return. My buddy sold the snake soon ofter she fed. Waiting 4 months for an animal to eat is really nerve wracking.

I had no pet for a long time after this and then in Korea saw iguanas for $30 each. I had a male and don't recommend them. Mine was very afraid of me and hissed and often tried to swat me with his tail. Then I got a female and she was a charm from the start; no swatting, a little hissing and a good appetite so she grew fast. I fed her by hand and stroked her while I did this. It made her very tame. She has never tried to bite me and it is going on 4 years now.

In Korea I also tried to keep a soft-shell turtle I found in the food market. This was an expensive animal about $75 and had been intended for some longevity soup. These turtles are raised in special ponds here. That animal was always hostile and could give a dangerous bite. In Canada the soft-shell turtle is very rare in Ontario. Eventually mine died in captivity as it refused to eat even when provided with live fish. It would kill them but not swallow. I preserved the body in soy sauce and then dried it, later donating it to the biology department of Memorial University in Newfoundland. This past summer brought two painted terrapins into my care and with more success. They had been left on the street curb with a note "Help Yourself? I fattened them up with chicken and egg yolk and released them in a Buddhist temple pond near my home. This is common practice in Korea. These turtles can be seen moving about beneath a thin layer of ice in the winter. Tougher than imagined. When I see turtles in danger on Ontario roads I usually pick them up and release them deep in the woods near my cottage. There is a lot of water for them there. Some have made it their home.

Rescued
This summer brought another animal into my care. I spotted peacocks gone lose in the forest near my Ontario cottage and the next day found one on the roadside hit by a car. It offered little resistance probably because of shock though I was worried as peacocks can give a terrible scratch. Got it back to a neighbor's porch where I pushed the broken leg bones back into the skin and splinted them after coating everything with iodine solution. It worked! In a few days the bird was eating well and getting quite feisty. Always give nature a chance.

So why do we keep pets and why do I expect to have more in the future? Well, recall the story of Baby the chicken...she was my teacher, as are all the animals we share our lives with.

Copyright Robin Tim Day 2005