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
