Wild Pet Stories

[Bud Man]

"Rocky"  Was of course a Raccoon, But how Rocky was obtained is : The Rest Of The Story.  The Missy and I with one rug-rat in tow had moved up and bought out first house. Immediately we noticed we had some critters by the sounds  we heard coming from the attic. Well a trip to the attic with some pots and pans combined with a few repairs to the outside of the house and fixing of entry holes and we thought we again had brought about the peace and quite we were searching . Thought It was just the three of us again, when we began hearing noises coming from the chimney. (figured coon or raccoon)  By watching,  we got a glimpse of Rocky's mom going and coming from the chimney.  Didn't take long to figure we didn't want to share our  chimney and I devised a plan to evict the coon. Went up on the roof and discovered mom had 4 pups and decided it was time for son to have a pet. Dropped a few pebbles down on mom and up she charged, none too happy,  and I made a hasty retreat and gave her the roof for the time being.  Well she immediately started moving her pups and after she moved three I put a grate over the chimney blocking her access to the fourth. The next morning I eased up on the roof with a fishing pole. After carefully looking around and determining that there weren't any fellows with white coats and  big people nets I went fishing.  Didn't take but a couple of minutes and I'd snagged and was reeling Rocky in , up the chimney. Rocky had to be bottle fed and became as tame as a coon will and stayed around having the run of the house for a little over a year.  Then Rocky duplicated Ben Franklin's discovery of electricity, but by chewing a wire, no more Rocky.  Rav ,...  Rocky made two trips to school in the form of show n tell, one alive and one after being re-cycled in the form of a hat.(pretty open-minded teacher)  Rocky still resides (20 years later) atop my son's entry way Hall -Tree and occasionally goes hunting atop my son's head and he also helped in the training of my his string of Red Bone hounds he still trains and uses in his quest for un-named coon's each fall.

[Frank_Pender]

As the story goes, from the main character and some of his friends.  This all occured around the time, prior to WW II.  Father of a very mischieveous boy had a pet coon.   Now, the father usually kept the pet tied or inside of a vary large cage.  Now,  for some of you youngins out there, times were a bit tough prior to The War.   So, the son, when he needed money for he and his friends to go to town, would let the coon loose.   the father would put up a nice reward for the return of the pet and everyone was happy when the son caught the pet coon and he had money to boot.   The young boys nickname became,  "Coon" Henry.  It still stickes with him to this day.  8) 8)

[awol]

I had 3 pet coons when i was little... they were the best pets i ever had.  Except for they got into everything.  I couldn't leave chips out or any kind of food whatsoever.  We took 2 of them to the farm store and left them in the truck.  When we came out there was only one in the cab.  We look under the seat,behind the seat. nowhere to be found.  Then we heard some scratching coming from the glove compartment, Open'd it up.........Racoon was playing with the insurance papers... never laughed so hard in my life

PS... NO comments about my grammer or spelling :-)

[Don P]

My little sister when she was 6 or 7 came in and asked my dad if she could have a pet squirrel if she caught it. What else could he say, "Sure, you catch one and you can have him" :D

She walks out of the house with the kitchen trash can...and returns 5 minutes later with a baby squirrel inside . She just walked under the trees and stood there with the trash can, and the baby chooses that instant to find out he wasn't a flying squirrel. Just like it was natural she walks back inside.  She's the baby, their luck just runs like that :D.
She kept him in a cage till he was grown, in that time he and the cat didn't see eye to eye. The cat got part of his tail. She turned him loose and we saw him around for 5 or 6 years.

[Jeff]

This is our newest wild pet. I don't know how wild she is, but her name is Pearl and she is a young Chinese Water Dragon.

[L. Wakefield]

snip

PS... NO comments about my grammer or spelling :-)

   Hey awol, round here we butcher the grammar for fun. Join on in. There's quite a few of us that keep trying to come up with the best (or worst) way to render the language asunder. This is the swellest group-o-nuts that ever fell off a tree.  :D  lw

[Frank_Pender]

Hey, LW most of my trees have cones.  :'(   So, can I be a cone off of a tree rather than a nut? :

[CHARLIE]

Hey Jeff, I think your pet has your eyes... ;D ;D  I've always heard that peoples pets start looking like them. ;)  Don't take offense, I'm being complimentary. ??? ???

[L. Wakefield]

Hey, LW most of my trees have cones.  :'(   So, can I be a cone off of a tree rather than a nut? :


   Either is, by far, better than being a legume. Speaking of cones- PINON! Now THAT is an excellent tree. 'Nuts' and resin both. I had sampled some incense from New Mexico that was very well done with pinon resin. I finally collected some on a trip to Arizona last year. It took me several batches of homemade incense to figure out the bast way to incorporate pinon, but I think I have it down now. My next challenge is to figure out how to use some of the northern conifers in the same fashion. The old recipe for balsam fir incense- I will have to get some of that and do some figgerin. Anyone got any old family recipes in this direction? We used to try taking the fairly well dried gum of various of the conifers and use it for chewing gum ('spruce gum') and that does give a hint of something useful.   LW- 'nuts' in the woods..

[Tom]

LW,

Tree resin can smell pretty good but it doesn't hold a candle to a 5lb beef roast in a covered pot with potatos and onions and carrots and garlic and salt and pepper and cayenne that has been left in a hot oven for several hours. ;D

[Don P]

Don't leave Tom out of the fracas :D. There's been a run of saponification going on round the house lately, with the upshot being some cypress oil came in with one of the soapmakers, it had a right pleasant stink ;D.

Some of the other things coming up from down there must have seriously weakened the wallpaper paste

"Oh de Pot Likker, Mama's Cooking Essential Oils"...lard based, I think you could sell that around here  :

[L. Wakefield]

   I only made soap once- about 17 years ago- and did use lard. I didn't know much about oils back then- tried to use clove oil but it didn't come out very strong. I've met cypress oil recently- have yet to come to terms with it- but would like to try distilling some sometime. Do you happen to know the country of origin of the cypress oil your folks were using?  lw

[Texas Ranger]

Jeff,
Here's a couple of da boys dat will be looking fer your little lizard.



Aerial view in the palms.

[Jeff]

Yep, we got one of those too. Gothim when we went to Florida to visit Tom. Technically called an Anole, but commonly called a chameleon because of the color changing. Ours lost has tail when we caught him, and its been kinda cool watching it grow back. Hes now living high on the hog in Michigan eating crickets bought on the internet. :D

I may have to start selling crickets up here. If you go to the pet store or bait shop they are about 1 a dozen. We buy them on the intenet for 9 dollars a thousand, and they come with food and cricket water (Jellied, so the DanG things don't drown.) So I guess we also have, at the time of this writing, about 800 other wild pets too ;D

[Tom]

Tammy and Stacy watch Jeff trying to catch a Lizard on the Satilla River in Georgia.