PETS!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21456, 1 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

PETS!

By MARIE BLOMFIELD. Cliff Eoad, St. Heliers (age 13). Until quite recently my brother and I had no pets that were really our own, but to make up for that he brought home some stray cat or dog every second month. For instance, he once rescued a fullgrown sheep which had fallen over the cliff. He brought it home and made it trot up and down the hall, while I laughed and mother scolded. For several weeks he kept it in a friend's paddock, but one day it disappeared and we saw it no more, though maybe the butcher did. Another time, after two stray dogs had come and gone, and a third had come to stay, he brought homo a little wild rabbit, which he had thoughtlessly dug out of its burrow. It was so young that at first it was fed with milk from a fountain pen filler, wlylo it nestled in the hollow of daddy's hand, but later, when it began to thrive on dainty tit-bits of lettuce and thistle, it found its way among the pot-plants and killed a flourishing young king fern. Mother never liked it after that.

Meanwhile the aquatic side of the menagerie was not neglected. Large crabs and shrimps from the beach had found their way to our place and once a largo eel as thick as a man's wrist came home over my brother's shoulder, but was given away to a Maori man, who was very grateful for it. For a whole night my brother surreptitiously kept trout in the bath, among mud and stones (to make them feel "at home ") whilo ho prepared a pond for therrt in tho back yard. For threo days they lay and gasped at the bottom of a rusty receptacle, but on tho fourth he carried tliern back to their own little stream and set them free.