Wild Child- Various Tails from My Childhood. (My Friends part 2)

It was all about the animals since the very beginning of my life. I have no one left to ask, so will put it together from stories I have been told and events as I remember them. Before I was born, somehow my family was exposed to a goat which had contracted rabies. As a result (and probably a lot of overreaction on the part of the medical community) my entire family had to undergo a series of rabies vaccinations. These were still the primitive days of long torturous needles through the stomach for several weeks. Since my mom was pregnant with me, somehow they had to do it from the back instead. So my animals & I were already causing trouble before I was even born. The family history also states that my Brother who was 12 1/2 years older hated me before I was even brought home from the hospital. He had caught a baby deer he had made into a pet & when my parents went to the hospital for me to be born, his precious fawn that he loved escaped from its pen. This of course was because of me & I don't think he ever got over it. It is said he would not come into the same room with me for over two weeks. It really is a shame about his deer. Apparently my first group of words that I put together as a story was about Arnold the pig who had a litter baby pigs. I can still remember my Daddy putting me on his lap and telling me tell the story. I always had at least one Siamese cat. I had one, Bojangles, that slept on my chest everynight from the time I was small. The old people who were still very superstitious were convinced the cat should be removed as it would "steal my breath away" while I slept. The cat stayed. My very first memory is standing in my crib watching Tom & Edith put up wall paper covered with circus animals in my room. My Brother always had dogs, mostly hounds. While he was away at war in the Navy, a trucker hit & killed his prize English Shepherd, Manfred. It is my only memory of receiving approval from him when I received a letter from Vietnam saying he was proud of me for not taking the dollar the driver offered to me. I was bitten by a neighbor's black lab when I was little & also witnessed a Doberman tear into the back of a boy's head right beside me so I spent most of my childhood terrified of dogs. Trick or treating was hell. But I always had what we called a snakedog. When you grow up by a creek in the hills of Tennessee, picking blackberries & tromping through the woods, you have to have a dog that will take the rattlesnake bite for you. My dog's name was Clyde & he took one over the eye & survived. He also survived being hit by a truck and knocked off the river bridge and then later found his way home. He was a good friend. He lived to be 15. I had a little white Maltese named Penny for about 20 seconds once. My Daddy took me to get her and I brought her in the back door and she made a beeline into my mother's bedroom and peed on the avacado green carpet & was put straight back into the car and I never saw her again. Living at my house was like living with Grizzly Addams & Steve Irwin. My Brother & Dad could catch anything. If I wanted a crow, my brother would bring one home the next day from high in the top of a tree. My Daddy & I caught five little baby skunks one time much to my mother's dismay. They went back to the woods to their mom pretty quick while I was dunked in gallons of tomato juice. I still don't mind the smell of skunk to this day but I can't stomach tomato juice! Once I had a new baby goat named Billy that I was running around with outside and when I opened the back door, he came in with me. When my Mama started screaming hysterically at me about the goat, Billy took off running through the house with my mom & I in hot pursuit close on his tail. Me trying to catch him & her trying to kill him. He ran into her Living Room which I wasn't even allowed in because she was so proud of her new furniture. He leaped up onto her brand new coffee table (how do they know?) while she screamed bloody murder & his little hooves DUG into it as he tried to stop himself and it was like sparks were flying all the way across the surface til he went sailing off the other side. I had Easter chicks one year that the fox from the pond ate. My Brother told me years later that the fox had NOT eaten my babies but when they pooped on my mom's front porch, she lost her very famous temper & picked them up and rung their necks. I also had a pet Donkey named Cocoa which my dad had made a cart for. My dad & brother also used to break horses, so I had various ponies & horses but never liked to use a saddle or a bit. I always rode bareback. My aunt & uncle had a farm I stayed at a lot and they kept pigs & chickens. I was always chasing down the chickens trying to catch them and then running for my life from the roosters trying to flawg me. Once when we butchered a pig, I remember my Daddy took me to his truck and let me hide down in the seat & cover my ears so I wouldn't hear the shot. Being a baby was not allowed in the country when it came to such things, so I guess he always knew how much they meant to me. I was always out on a boat fishing with my Daddy. Aside from the critters he brought to me, he was my best friend. I used to put my arm down into the water under the boat and touch big huge carp that were longer than I was. Once my Dad was walking thru the creek with waders on and a water moccasin jumped INTO the waders....and my Daddy jumped out. One summer two frogs jumped piggyback into my plastic kiddie pool and left behind hundreds of tadpoles. We had aquariums full of snakes, turtles, toads & praying mantises. I always had cats & kittens, one time I had a grand total of 27! My Brother used to catch rattlesnakes and put them in paper bags and give them to our housekeeper & aunts. He would call me over to him while he was milking it. You hold it tightly behind its mouth and put its fangs into a cloth stretched over the top of a jar and they secrete their venom into it. He would get me to take hold of it behind its jaws and then walk off and leave me there alone. I have been bitten by a copperhead but luckily never a rattler. Once I went down to the creek to check my minnow trap I was keeping some frogs in & when I finally got it up out of the water it was filled with a big old water moccasin which of course had eaten my frogs. My Uncle Joe took me to the store once and bought me a hamster. It got out of the box on the way home & got into the dashboard of his brand new car. We never got him out. We had a little dog that nursed an orphaned kitten along with her puppies. We also had hawks, pigeons, rabbits & several parakeets. When my brother had his wedding in our house, my Uncle Bud the preacher asked if anyone had any reason-speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace, my parakeet Blue Boy yelled out, "Oh Be Quiet!!" The one animal that my Daddy & I always wanted but never got was a pet monkey. My Mama always said if we ever brought a monkey in, she would leave. Some choices are never easy. :) So those are some of my animal memories from my childhood & that's just the first ten years. I was never allowed to have kids over or go to their houses very often so my pets were my friends & companions. They still are. :)