I can’t say I was the main force in a cherished pet family. I just have had a few slightly tangential moments to this point. Before age 4, my daddy had white bitch named Snow White. She littered the Seven Dwarfs which he gave away one by one without a specific name. Though there was no true bonding, i was the owner of Bill the pony. While children still lived at home, various goldfish and two cats were fed and tended. The cats stayed in the family house longer than the children, just walking through the cat door and away when their years of belonging were up. Now, I have raised caterpillars to butterflies. They require little attention and definitely no naming.
Yet, I still have a longing to have created a habitation for three creatures. One I gave a try as a step toward success. The second tantalized me with a relative’s possibility. The third will only be a never will happen dream. I could hear the owl call at night and even found a baby that had fallen from a nest. Of course, I read up and purchased an owl box. An elder son climbed up a ladder that I steadied to attach the box at a prescribed height in an enticing (I hoped) oak tree. Two years later, I realized that home was ignored, and the box rotten down of its own volition.
Trial two was the possibility of a bee hive.The buzzing of noisy production and the vision of multiple small winged creatures going in and out of plants in my garden before returning to their home was the enticement more than suiting up to gather honey. I read the catalogues and scattered botanical attractors’ seeds with no success. However, more aggressive carpenter bees attacked a beam in a breezeway. They drilled multiple holes and disappeared to make unseen tunnels in the depths. Keeping the beam intact required a vigilant program of spraying the holes.
Number 3 will remain only a wish fired by teaching My Side of the Mountain. A generation of 5th graders and I did extensive research before abandoning the project. of raising a hawk.The first three requirements cut short our idea: be approved by a licensed agency; build a large cage in your back yard where birds can fly, and document that you are spending a prescribed time per day giving attention to training. I have to be content with newspaper articles that state pereqines nest on window sills downtown in Houston.
The wildness of these mentioned animals appeals to me maybe because they keep alive a genetic memory of God creating and bringing one of their ancestor for Adam to name. When we lived on Rice Blvd, I could hear the morning rumble of lions in the zoo waking up. Out from Fort Davis, I have seen bighorn sheep scampering up sides of a mountain, and migrating elk created moving shadows beside a dark road as I drove to Estes Park.
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
Let Me Tell Ya 