Up-Grading in Pets

 

When I was young my parents took me to a falconry display. You might have seen them on TV. The trainer puts his arm out as a perch and he has a falcon or owl on it. He commands it to fly to the trees and then calls it back by tempting it with a morsel of raw meat.

The trainer called me forward and he tried it with a small bird. It was an owl. I was so impressed that I wanted to have my own bird pet.

I wanted to train a swan to fly on my arm at my command.

My parents tried to discourage me to go for such a big bird but at the same time they did not want to dampen my spirits. I suppose it was good-parenting in a way.

They suggested I start with a small pet and slowly up-grade or graduate from there.

My first pet was an earwig. I kept it in a jam jar. The earwig is a nocturnal insect so it did not do much in the day time. It eats dead plant and animal matter. So I put a leaf there with it. Earwigs hide in damp, dark places during the day, so I gave it a moist piece of cloth. But it is useless at flying.

When I balanced the jam jar on my arm it fell and broke into million pieces. Luckily I was outside at the time. My parents patiently cleared up the broken glass but we never found the earwig.

My second pet was a mouse. I kept him in a glass tank. Because the glass tank was too big and heavy to balance on my outstretched arm, I took the mouse out in the garden and balanced him on my arm. He fell and ran into the bushes. I never found him; but moments later the neighbour's cat came out of the bushes licking its lips. My parents told me maybe he shared his lunch with the mouse.

My third pet was a crocodile. It was a plastic crocodile which would not fly off my arm. So I threw it up a tree. Sadly it did not fly back when I called him back. Dad suggested I tie him with string and pull him back. Unfortunately the string got caught in a branch and broke. The crocodile remained there up the tree. Dad got up a ladder to get it back. He fell into the thorny bushes. I was not popular that day.

Mom told me to train the crocodile to "fly" at ground level. This way I could pull him back on the string safely.

I never graduated to be a lion whisperer. An ambition which my uncle achieved seconds before he died.