from me to you - part 2

Dear Sheddists,

today's journey back in time sees us revisit long deceased childhood pets.

I hasten to add the deer I'm pictured with here is not one of them. The photo opposite does, however, feature a cute little animal, albeit one dressed with the sartorial elegance which so distinguished sophisticated child-wear of the 60s.

The khaki-coloured baggy shorts are set off perfectly by a huge fringed cowboy-hat, accessorised with matching toy weaponry - very possibly a miniature sawn-off shotgun by the look of it. The 60s, as you may have gathered already, were most decidedly not a PC decade.

If memory serves me correct, the photo was taken by my father at a petrol-filling station en route to a family holiday in Scotland.  It appeared in a local newspaper, a yellowed clipping from which is to be found somewhere about the House, if I could but locate it.

I digress though, so here's to the question of the day.

What sort of pets did you have when you were young and what were their names?

My mother's pride and joy was the family dog, a phrase I use in the very loosest of senses as Sheba the Yorkshire Terrier took an intense dislike on principle to anyone who came within a self-determined ten yard exclusion zone.


Not the most prepossessing of specimens, Sheba resembled an ill-fitting grey toupee through which could be seen intermittently a set of sharpened and yellowing teeth, usually poised at the ready in an angry grimace.  Her territory was a a green-painted dog box in which she hid all her doggy treasures, the jewel in the crown being a set of mouldy sausages. They were carefully curated by Sheba from breakfasts long-past and amounted to a kind of canine delicatessen charcuterie.

The first pet of my own was a tortoise, the name and sex of which eludes me. However, I do recall taking said tortoise with me on a variety of trips to the local village shops, carried lovingly in an old strawberry punnet. Goodness knows what the local shop-keepers must have made of this!

Next up was Monty, a hamster whose sibling Jimmy accompanied us home from the pet-shop in matching cardboard boxes nestled carefully on the respective laps of my goodself and my younger brother.  They were named in honour of Jim Montgomery, the legendary Sunderland goal-keeper whose brilliant save against Leeds in the 1973 Cup Final secured a historic victory for the Wearsiders.

The life-span of the average hamster is but a short thing so a year or two later we greeted Monty's successor. Dusty was my all-time favourite pet, a lively Agouti guinea pig with a venturing spirit that caused him in due course to make a bee-line for the sanctuary of the most shady and over-grown spot in our back-garden.  He went AWOL and tears were shed.

A replacement was duly purchased at the local pet-shop a week later - Heinz, a small piebald piggie who settled in quickly to Dusty's old cage. And then, joy of joys, Dusty made a dramatic re-appearance on the lawn, seemingly unperturbed by a week's feral voyaging in the lesser traveled reaches of back-garden shrubbery.

The decision was made to put the two together to save on cage-costs and after a certain amount of excitable interplay Dusty and Heinz settled down amicably. A few weeks later we realised our mistake. Heinz was female and now decidedly pregnant! She delivered a delightful litter of piglets and the rest is history.  I remain to this day a guinea pig fancier.

Best regards,

electrofried(mr)