I had a lot of pets growing up. I guess you could say the 11,000 laying hens on our chicken farm as pets, but I never did. They were way too much work! Many of my pets were work, too, but they were fun.

I don’t remember my first dog but was told a lot about her by my parents. She was my best friend when I was about three years old and mom said she looked after me, barking like crazy if I tried to leave the yard. And she had a special talent in the fall when pecans fell from the trees in our yard. She would pick up a pecan, bring it to me and crack it with her teeth so I could eat it. And mom said the nut was never even wet.

Many of my pets were wild critters I caught and brought home, but my favorite was a flying squirrel that found us.. One summer the young squirrel came down our chimney and we caught it. It lived in a birdcage in the living room for years.

I named it Perry Mason after my favorite TV show. Perry was very tame and I would often sneak him into my shirt pocket and take him to school. He would sleep in my pocket all day during class and I would take him out to play at recess. He never got me into trouble.

Perry was very smart and figured out how to unlatch his cage door. One Sunday night we came home from church and when mom turned the lights on he came sailing off the top of a curtain and landed on mom’s head. I thought that was the end of Perry but when she stopped screaming she started laughing. It was funny – after she realized what got her.

Mom hated snakes and would not tolerate them in the house, but I often caught a king snake and kept it in a box in the barn, feeding it mice I caught in the feed bins. Daddy would always insist I let it go after a few days, saying it could catch rats and mice on its own.

I caught a “water moccasin,” what we called any snake around water, and brought it home. I was proud of myself. I had seen the snake trapped in the concrete overflow spillway behind the church. It was down about 20 feet from the top of the dam and I went home and made a noose on the end of a long pole to catch it.

When I got home I had to take it back to the pond and let it go immediately. It was not poisonous, I knew to look for the triangular head to tell me if they were dangerous, but mom and dad agreed it had no place around our house.

Every summer when the branch dried up I would have washtubs in the back yard with small bream and catfish I caught in the holes left by the receding water. I would work hard hauling them to the house in five gallon buckets of water and setting up a hose from our well to fill the tubs. But they always died.

Thinking back it is ironic that I worked so hard one day to save the branch fish and the next day I would go across the branch to Rodgers Pond, catch little bream and catfish clean them and have them for dinner.

In the spring I would often find baby bird that had fallen out of their nests. I tried a few times to put them back but quickly found out the mama bird would push them back out of the nest. I guess I tainted them by touching them.

I had many bought pets, too, from canaries to hamsters. Hamsters were my favorite and I actually had a hamster farm for a couple of years, breeding them and selling the young ones for a quarter. Many of my friends would surprise their parents by bringing one home from school after buying it from me with their lunch money. Their parents usually were not pleased!

Pets are generally good for kids and teach them a lot about loving something, being responsible taking care of it, and the sorrow of losing something you love since they live for such a short time.