I grew up on a farm.  We raised Angus beef cattle, chickens, and Mallard ducks, along with the corn, oats, soy beans and alfalfa crops.  We also had our pets.  Many times I’ve been asked how you can have a farm animal for a pet when you raise them for food.  There was always a distinction between the farm animals and your pets – you did not eat your pets!

I think every child should have the responsibility of having a pet.  Not only can it be a great companion for the child, but being responsible for another living thing can teach the child so much about life.  Of course, almost all pets do not live as long as we do, so it also teaches the child about the end of life.

I had 2 favorite pets as a child, not counting the cats and dogs.  I was the one in charge of raising the Mallard ducks, which really consisted of, not only feeding them, but checking their nests when they were hatching in the springtime.  Sometimes the hen would leave the nest before all the eggs were hatched, and we would then incubate the eggs until they hatched and give the ducklings to their mother.  One nest had a duckling that had pipped the egg, which means that it had broken the shell with the sharp point on its beak, but needed help to finish the job.  I brought the egg into the house and helped the duckling hatch.  It is true about ducks imprinting on their mother – I had become the mother!

I begged my mom to let us keep the duckling in the house after I tried to give it to the mother hen and she would just chase it and peck at it.  Of course, the duckling would always follow me as I tried to leave it anyway.  Having a soft heart (or something!) my mother said OK.  From that day on, Beeper lived in a box in our kitchen for the next 3 ½ years.  Ducks are quite messy birds, so any time anyone came to visit, I had to quickly change the newspaper in the bottom of her box.

She loved to hear my sister and I play the accordion.  In fact, her favorite song was Missouri Waltz.  As soon as she heard that song, she would tuck her bill into her wing, close her eyes, stand on 1 foot and coo.  If we were playing any other song, and then broke into Missouri Waltz, she would always respond the same way!

Beeper would follow me around where ever I went.  We would go fishing in the Iowa lakes and let her go swimming, but when it was time to go home, we just called for her and she would come back to us.

She was not accepted by the other ducks on the farm.  They would chase her away and come running back to me.  After a couple of years, when springtime came, she made a nest and started laying eggs.  Of course, they were not fertile eggs and would only rot, so I decided to swipe an egg from another nest to put in Beeper’s nest.  She was very diligent about staying on her eggs, until the fertile egg finally hatched.  I think she thought she was human though, because she ran away from the duckling as fast as she could.  I’ll never forget seeing the poor duckling try to catch up with her!

It was a heart breaking loss to me when my dad found her dead on the gravel road.  Apparently, she had wandered on to the road and was hit by a car.  It was a good lesson in dealing with grief for me, but perhaps not for my mom who put up with Beeper in the kitchen for 3 ½ years!

Barn Owl

Our second unusual pet was a barn owl.  My mother had found the baby owl abandoned in its nest and brought it home.  We studied up on owls and decided to help it grow to maturity, after naming it Oscar.  We put it in one of our parakeet cages and found that Oscar loved chicken livers.  Living in a small town, it soon got around that we needed chicken livers, so all the farms and the butcher shop in town saved us the chicken livers.  Oscar grew into a beautiful bird.  I’ll never forget his wondrous eyes and how it seemed that he could  turn his head in a complete circle.

One day we were shelling corn and it was my little brother’s job to kill the mice as they ran out of the corn crib.  Of course, the first couple of mice he gave to Oscar who relished the change of diet.  The next day, my mother went to the freezer to take out meat for dinner to thaw, and I heard this scream.  When I came running, I saw what the problem was.  My brother had laid out 6 nice mice in the freezer for the next few Oscar meals!

We have many Beeper, Oscar and other pet stories, but I think having this in my background helped me raise my kids with a great respect for pets and the responsibility that goes with them.  In fact, my daughter took it to heart and is a practicing vet technician at an Emergency Clinic.  She has her own menagerie of a Golden Retriever, 2 rats, 3 slider turtles and, at one time – 5 cats!

For more information on the Common Barn Owl, go here.