Watching a squirrel scurry around in my yard looking for breakfast brought back memories of some of the wild pets I had growing up. I know now it is illegal to keep wild animals as pets, and a terrible idea, too, but 60 years ago I had to learn on my own.

    The old farmhouse I lived in until I was 12 years old had a chimney on a covered fireplace. The oil burner heater had a pipe vent that went up the chimney but it was open around it.

    One winter Sunday night as we came in from church and turned on the lights, something came off the top of the curtains and landed in mama’s hair. As soon as she calmed down we caught the little critter, a flying squirrel.

    It had come down the chimney trying to find a warm place, I think. Daddy got the old bird cage we had stored and we put the critter in it. Over the next few weeks it got very calm and would take pecan halves from our fingers. We named it “Perry” after the detective TV series popular at the time.

    Perry lived with us for three years. I would sometimes sneak him into a shirt pocket and take him to school. He slept the day away except when I got him out to play with at recess and lunch – and maybe sometimes during class.

    One of the biggest mistakes I ever made happened after I moved to Griffin in 1972.  I was deer hunting near High Falls Lake one Saturday and stayed in the tree until it got too dark to shoot.

    As I walked back to the car, our old VW Bug, a mama raccoon and five kits in single line behind her crossed the trail not far ahead.  I had taken my big, heavy coat off for the walk out of the woods, and genius me decided to catch one of the kits in it.

    I ran up and put my coat over the last one in line and wrapped it up tightly. When I got to the car I put the bundle in the storage area behind the back seat and settled in to drive home.

    Apparently cranking the engine did not sit well with the young raccoon. I had the interior light on and looked up in the rear-view mirror just in time to see teeth and claws come over the top of the back seat.

    Somehow I got the raccoon wrapped back up and went home. Linda was not too surprised when I brought the bundle into our apartment at Grandview, she knew I was odd since I had a pet guinea pig running loose in my dorm room at UGA when we met.

    There was a small bathroom under the stairs in our apartment so I put a bowl of water on the floor, released my new pet, and slammed the door before it could get to me.  I figured I would make a cage for it the next day.

    Sunday morning I slowly cracked open the bathroom door but could not see the critter. When I saw some bottles on the floor I looked up to see two black beady eyes and barred teeth pointed toward me from the medicine cabinet. I have no idea how it got up the tile wall to it, opened the door and settled in on a shelf. 

    I made a nice four-foot square cage with hardware cloth wire on all sides, top and bottom. It sat up on concrete blocks so we could clean under it. After about a week “Rocky” seemed to start to calm down a little and did not go crazy when I got near the cage.

    One day Linda decided to vacuum and ran the wand under the cage. Rocky went berserk, bouncing off the walls, top and bottom of the cage. I don’t think he liked the sound of the critter coming after him.

    For another week I tried to tame Rocky but every time I got withing six feet of his cage he went crazy. I was afraid he would kill himself slamming into the walls of the cage. I finally let him go in the back yard.

    I have had many pets from hamsters that I raised to sell when in elementary school to dogs, cats and fish. I also caught mice and kept them as “pets” but they were never as much fun as hamsters. And mama took exception every time I tried to keep a pet snake, even Kingsnakes!

    At one time there were 22 “pet” cats on our farm and all had names.  But some disease spread and killed all but one, the big, long hair black cat that was mama to many of them.  I have no idea how she survived.

    Now I am down to two dogs, and that is enough. No more wild animals for me, they can be fun but it is illegal and can be dangerous!