About Some Of The Animals In My Life

There have been many animals in my life, from when I was a child, to now, as a middle-aged adult. OK, maybe a retired adult is more truthful. I’m currently 58, getting closer and closer to 59. Wow, how did that happen?

Oh, it happened, wrinkle by wrinkle, white hair by white hair, but slowly … Anyway, age is just a number, you’re only as old as you feel, etc, etc. The truth of it is that my life feels like an interesting platter of life and death, procreation, games, different ways of being, and lessons to be learnt for my benefit if I pay proper attention.

And watching the animals in my life is where most of those lessons have come to me. Life is wonderful, for sure, and even though I doubt I’m actually in my middle age person, because I’m fairly sure I won’t live to be even one hundred, let alone whatever 58 times two is. Hmm, 116, correct? I think so …

But I’m still going along well, thinking about the animals I’ve had in my life in various ages and stages.

As a child, there was the cat that gave me a scratch, it made me a little bit scared of cats, for a short while, but I’m over that now. The cat had been on the fence, a bit like the one in the picture. I somehow reached up to it, and may have hugged to tightly, I can’t remember that detail, I was only about six or so, I think. But the cat scratched me, and it hurt! A lot! That may have something to do with why my preference has always leaned strongly toward dogs though.

As a preteen, I went a bit dog mad, and wanted one so hard it almost hurt. Then I went from pre to actual teen, and boys became a more favoured ‘animal’ of choice … But my father was a horse trainer, so there were always horses in the family, with the stables eventually just up the road from our house, and I was his stable hand, and then strapper, with my older bother.

Family trips were often horse related, and rarely did any of us kids have our preferences considered.

We all did OK though from those equine connections, with my older brother becoming a successful reinsman, driving many winners for our father, and other trainers. And my younger brother has gone on to become an owner of harness racing horses, with some quite successful nags over the years.

Those years brought horses and mice (where the grain is, you’ll find mice) into my life. And of course, mice are pets as well as pests, and I’ve had a short stint as an owner of pet mice as a child too. Right now, I’m having far too many mice visit my kitchen, uninvited and I would never, ever consider having a mouse as a pet now, not after the invasion that comes to our household some years. I live in the county, and there are paddocks of grain crops all around, and as I said, were there is grain, you’ll find mice, like it or not …

So … I had a rabbit at one stage, no make that two rabbits. a boy rabbit and a girl rabbit. I was young, that’s my excuse. The rabbits may have been a joint pets of me and my two brothers, I can’t remember now. But the boy rabbit got loose one day, and was chased and I think, killed, by a neighbour's dog, and then the other rabbit seemed to disappear, from my mind at least, if not for real. I may have been traumatised about this, the details have left my mind. I remember the boy rabbit’s name was Rex — Sexy Rexy, so you can imagine what us children saw happening in the rabbit hutch …

My brothers and I brought a cat home that we found at the nearby river at one time, and that cat, a male tom cat, was probably the least pet-like cat ever, really. I remember he used to scratch at my legs if I went out the back door to hang out washing after school. I seems cats seemed to like to scratch me! I wanted to love that cat, but really, I was wasting my time. He knew what his role in life was, and it was similar to Sexy Rexy’s role, making love to his lady friend/s. It was all very mind opening for us children.

Then I was a young adult and after that a young woman, and met my now husband. He had both a dog (which looked quite a bit like the one in the photo there), and a cat, both well behaved and lovely pets, who got on well together. When we all lived together, after a couple of years, the cat, Emma, would sleep on our bed, in fact on me, on my hip if I slept on my side, which I normally do, even still. These were both older pets, and once they were gone, we got another dog, that unfortunately ran away from home. We got a puppy then, a Schnauzer, and she lived with us in the suburbs where we would take her to dog shows on most weekends, for a couple of years, when we had decided to breed these pure bred dogs.

This led to us moving to the country, while still showing these dogs. And of course, in the country, the number of animals in your life rises drastically. There were spiders, a great many wild birds, and many bugs, as well as my least favourite animals, snakes. In Australia, especially in the part we live in, South Australia, there are venomous snakes, and one of our dogs, the one we still have, almost died from being bitten by a Brown Snake. She is still a bit addicted to looking for these snakes, but at her advanced age, I doubt she’k make it through if she was bitten again. We’re careful to have this dog, Missy, inside most of the time, just in case.

The variety of birds we get out here thrills me, and I have counted more than forty-five different kinds of birds. Some of them are native birds, some are birds brought to Australia that have gone feral. Then there are the chickens and other poultry owned by our neighbours, which we can hear and sometimes see.

There were some peacocks that used to live around here, and one time three of them wandered down the street and decided to visit our property! Peacocks! Wow, that was an amazing afternoon, trying to shoo them away, but not really knowing where to shoo them off to … They made it back to their own homes eventually, and I have no idea if they are even still alive. I do know they have quite a loud call, because I heard them calling out, from the height of the roof of our dog kennels!

Oh, and one of our poultry owning neighbours also had a couple of pet pigs, at one stage, and I remember meeting the pigs, and being encouraged to give one of the pigs and apple. It was a bit frightening, these creatures were not sweet little piglets, they were fully grown adult pigs, easily as big as a pony!

We used to have a pond with frogs in and around it, as well as gold fish swimming in it. I loved being able to hear the frogs calling in the evening, but they’re all gone now, and the various fish we’ve put in our pond have all died. I think I’ve lost heart over the idea of having fish, now. I did see a lizard in the pond recently, but it had drowned, sadly.

And if our dog sees any lizards around the place, she will attack and eat them. She is a hunting breed of dog, a Pharaoh Hound, and hunting things is her greatest instinct, or it used to be, when she was younger. Now sleeping somewhere comfortable inside is her ‘big thing’.

As well as all of the lovely birds, we also are sometimes visited by flying insects, flies, and bees, but as well as dragon flies, and a few different kinds of moths, as well as the occasional butterfly. I love these delightful creatures! (not the flies, I sure don’t love them!) So there are a few of the animals in my life, but of course, being in farmland, there are also different kinds of livestock, cows, sheep and goats.

And I’ve just remembered Gretel the goat. She was ours, but lived at a friend’s place just up the road, with another goat. I would milk Gretel and feed the milk to our puppies we had at the time. I can’t remember how long that went one, but while I quite liked the goat’s milk, I wasn’t that upset when Gretel had to go.

The friend had an unfortunate incident with her own goat, from memory, and both goats went back to where they came from, a property about ten kilometres away …

Did I mention spiders? Before my husband and I moved from the suburbs to the country for the dog breeding, he was quite phobic about spiders … That was a problem because Australia has many different kinds of spiders, some of them quite safe, but some poisonous …

He still doesn’t like spiders, but he doesn’t shriek if he sees them nowadays, he just drowns them with pest spray. If I see one of the big huntsman spiders we get sometimes, I will try to catch it and take it outside, where it will be safe from him and his spray can!

There are midges, and a million other kinds of insects out there, mostly quite small. We get ants of a few different sizes and types. And I mentioned bees earlier, I think, but I have recently begun looking far more closely at bees. We have few bird baths around our place including one close to out back door, and over the past few weeks, that bird bath seems to have been accepted as a good place to go to get a drink. I’ve been saddened to see some of the bees fall in the water, and drown, so I’ve been trying to keep a watch on the situation as best I can …

I’ve been watching these bees quite a bit, and have noticed there are different kinds, and after a little bit of research, I’ve discovered the world of bees in a very interesting world indeed. We seem to have mostly the normal honey bees that are probably feral descendants of ‘working’ bees, from hives around, I suppose. But there is a slimmer, darker bee too, and I wonder whether those are native bees. Interesting. I don’t know the answers to my wonderings, but I’m happy I’ve been able to save some of the bees from drowning, by getting them out of the water and putting them somewhere where they can dry off, and fly away somewhere safer.

So that is some information about many of the animals that have been in my life. There were rats as well, when I was doing biology at high school, but I found that quite a shocking thing, to have to cut open a rat and do things to it, so I left that one more or less alone. I didn’t mention the terrible road kill that happens with birds and animals on the country roads around here. That is even more shocking than those poor rats. Cars and wild creatures don’t go together well, and seeing the results as I drive from here to there, and back saddens me immensely.

I’m sure I could never be a farmer, I am far too soft-hearted. I am not ashamed of that, I am proud to be a person who cares. From those drowning bees, to feral cats on the road, to the steers in the paddocks, and to those huntsman spiders, oh yes, I care …