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Well actually, not mine. This was submitted by an anonymous lurker on The Cellar, along with this explanation: “When this little guy was young he lost his mother too soon. So the Fish and Game brought him to Wendall and Debbie. They asked them to get him raised to a safe age to turn him loose again. So they bottle fed and took care of him; after a while they fed him with their cows. Stayed gone all summer; then this fall he was back with the cows. He really thinks he is a cow for now, all were happy to see him as he is pretty friendly.”
My good friend Chris has a similar, but somewhat more frightening story: when he and his sister were growing up outside of Reno, a neighbor down the street had a baby mountain lion as a pet. It had wandered in through their cat door one day, no lion parents in sight, and the neighbors raised and nursed it. Chris and his sister would play with the baby mountain lion — but soon it grew, and within a year, was full-sized. These kids were four and six years old, respectively, and playing with a full-grown mountain lion — until, that is, the lion charged Chris’ sister, pinned her to the ground and clamped its jaws around her throat, wagging its tail playfully all the while. (Their parents put the kibosh on such fun and games after that.)
Anyone else owned or interacted with less-than-normal pets? We’d love to hear about it (unless you’re Paris Hilton; we’ve seen quite enough of your baby kinkajou monkey, thankyouverymuch).
Comments (5)
Comment
My father fed a local possum in our home in suburban Augusta, GA. He nicknamed her Pogo. Every night, we’d put the day’s leftover cat food outside for her, and once it was completely dark she’d wander up to the porch and eat it.
One day she brought a baby with her, and that one was named Little Pogo (since my dad was fairly uncreative about this sort of thing.) Pogo and Little Pogo continued to be fed in this manner for several years, although eventually they started coming separately. Those were two very fat possums.
posted by Cathy on 2-6-2007 at 2:13 pm
My only experience up close with a Moose was when I was 12 or so. We were in the Grand Tetons and a large male was walking through deep grass next to a parking lot, maybe 30 feet away. My father decided he would get closer and take a picture, but when he jumped down into the grass he realized just how big the Moose really was. The grass which came to dad’s shoulders was barely touching the belly of the Moose. When the Moose turned and gave him one of those “excuse me” stares dad snapped the pic and scrambled back up into the parking lot.
posted by Sean on 2-6-2007 at 7:19 pm
I don’t have a story about me, but a fellow member of a college club I’m in told us one day that while he was growing up his very rich, and very eccentric step-father raised a female lion as a house cat. As for their outdoor pets, there were two elephants and two giraffes in the backyard.
The town was always against them owning the animals as neighbors constantly complained. Eventually they got sick of the complaining and got rid of them.
posted by Rob on 2-6-2007 at 10:25 pm
I don’t have any unusual pets, but one of my brother’s soccer buddies has a goat. It was their mascot for their rec soccer team (their team name was GOAT) and occasionally it would accompany them to the games.
posted by Janel on 2-7-2007 at 1:07 am
My mother was always taking in injured this and that and nursing them well–birds, squirrels, mice, bunnies, etc. and always releasing them as soon as they became well enough, if they did. We did have a few funerals during her time as animal nurse.
At one point in time, we were in Quebec and came across a baby bird–no feathers, just fuzz–that had fallen from his nest, three stories up.
We ended up taking him in and in fact smuggling him across the border back to Maine where we lived. He was a starling and grew attached to us. That summer we released him into “the wild”, but he still stuck very close to the house and we ended up creating a birdhouse for him on the porch. He’d spend all day in the trees and if we called out “Peeper” (that was his name) he’d come flying out from wherever and land on our shoulder.
posted by SuperEmi on 2-7-2007 at 10:42 am