This little fellow is out of hibernation and running around checking his old haunts out. I've always loved little creatures like this one. It all started when I was a girl living in a new development that had once been wild fields. Summer would find me carrying a jar or box with something alive in it. You never knew what I would have. I would wake up in the morning and eat a hurried breakfast and dash out to see what I could find. Our window wells always had salamanders in them. I would catch them...easily.... and put them in an aquarium with a little water. I could spend the day just fixing up a habitat for those salamanders. After a couple of days, I would let them go.Grass hoppers were interesting to me....I wondered about them spitting "tobacco juice" Ant farms were often home made. I'd fill a container with sand and then catch the ants...My ants didn't have to worry about what they were going to eat. I would take honey out of Mom's kitchen and pour it down the tunnels. Poor ants...I wonder how many survived my special care :) We kids had all the fields to explore. We would build forts and put up tents. We'd run to the edge of the field and watch the patients at the farm colony at Elgin Mental Health Hospital. We would be hiding...so they couldn't see us. The boys built a fort in a field next to our house and wouldn't let us girls in. They would get down in the big hole and pull the wooden roof over the top. We girls would be watching and as soon as the top went on...we made a beeline to the fort and jumped and stamped our feet on this big wooden board......driving the boys crazy. One summer I was lucky enough to catch a chipmunk. Not knowing the danger, I gently held him and kept him in a box. I carried him around and showed everyone a peek at him inside...probably a shivering little creature. I let him go soon after I caught him. My parents didn't really like animals. We would have a dog and before you knew it the dog would be gone to the farm. I said to them, "When I have a home of my own...my kids will be able to have any pet they want."......and this happened. My kids had all kinds of pets from a parrot, rabbit, lizards, mice, rats, parakeets, cats who had kittens, and dogs.Our pets were well taken care of and lived to old age. A few of them went back to the pet shop like the parrot and mice. It seems funny to me that me, being a girl, was so interested in these animals.Some of my friends were squeamish around these creatures. I just had a love for animals that lasts today. I have a hard time killing a mouse :)
Balisha
4 comments:
You have brought back memories from my own childhood.
We believe in the relocation method to get animals we don't want to share our space with away.
Love your story of the forts. I can so picture a group of girls laughing and jumping on the boys' cover.
Hi Balisha....I also have always loved animals. As a child I remember catching all kinds of critters including tomatoe worms that I carried around in a box and said they were my pets and tadpoles that I watched turn into frogs. Interesting that I'm so afraid of frogs and toads now...not sure what happened. All of us kids would run and play all day long on the weekends and after school. We had so much fun!
Balisha,
I enjoyed your post so much. I was the same way as a child (and a little bit still). It went even further with me, because my mom and dad always encouraged it. Many of my found pets came from rescuing creatures from the cats. Our backyard had 2 dogs, a big white rabbit, 3 kitties, and a squirrel. The squirrel was in a large cage, until someone stole the squirrel, cage and all. The dogs and rabbit and cats would all lay down together in the shade. Cars would stop to see the animals laying all together like that.
One super hot summer day, my dad and I went into a neighbor's back yard to rescue some bats out from under a galvanized wash tub. It was a mother bat and her little baby that was still nursing. We gave her water and milk, and bits of meat. She ate and lapped up the milk and water like a little dog, only while hanging upside down, and seemed grateful as she looked at us. She wasn't frightened of us at all. She never tried to nip us. I thought that they had very tiny, dog-like faces. We set her free late that night after it had cooled down. She flew off with her little baby still clinging to her.
Animals never seemed to fear me (or my parents). I learned so much about all of the different animals.
Nowadays there are so many laws and regulations that such things would never be allowed. Kids aren't even supposed to touch turtles anymore because of salmonella and I guess kids don't wash their hands anymore. By today's standards, you and I were living dangerously with our salamanders, chipmunks/squirrels, turtles, etc. But just think of all of the fun we had!
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