RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30540, 8 September 1964, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

FIVE’S COMPANY . . .

Animals often show unsuspected cunning, and perhaps it all has something to do with Armand and Michaela Dennis. For years now they have been upsetting everyone with their off-handling of everything most people find repulsive, from the octopus to the snake. Nothing comes amiss to them. They seem to spend their lives stumbling over wounded warthogs and making pets of them. Ordinary folk, whose only experience of the thrills of safari consists of spotting a thar at 300vds on a tramping holiday, lean towards cats and dogs. Goldfish have their limitations, snails seldom return the affection bestowed on them, and white mice hold

thrall over a very limited public. Cats and dogs are normal, and worry hardly anyone. But this animal cunning business is undeniable. The opossum, for instance, is not everyone’s favourite. Yet Pine avenue the other night was the stage for a drama which offered pathetic evidence that even the lowest of the animals is aware of man's cruel indifference. Here was this young woman, swingin’ along down the avenue, when she saw what she thought was a kitten. She held out a hand and made the customary calls. A young opossum climbed up her trousers and clung to her coat, looking at her beseechingly. She shook

herself gently, in a ladylike manner, and the opossum disengaged and returned to the footpath. The woman who has since confessed that she is thin, and might have been mistaken for a pole sidled round it and walked on, with the opossum keeping pace in the rear. At home, told her husband they seemed to have a new pet. He rolled over moaning: there was already a Scottie, a big cat, a little cat, a budgie and a guinea pig. He was ail for playing possum himself. And this they did. But could it be clearer that the word has got round among the opossum family of what Graham Kerr has in mind for them?