Beech Tree News Network

Did you know there is actually an organization in the US that rescues chickens?  Evidently, the popularity of organic produce and the backlash against genetically altered poultry spurred many city folk to set up chicken coups in their own backyards.  The unforeseen consequences of noise, smell and angry neighbors forced many to abandon the project, hence the need for Chicken Rescue.
    Growing up in the fifties, I don’t think any of us could have foreseen the need for rescuing chickens or the open season on pythons in the Everglades—yet another domestication project gone bad—or all the TV news clips involving Animal Control rounding up kangaroos, chimps and tigers gone wild on city streets.
    My own children heard the call of the wild early on, and attempted to domesticate all sorts of critters.  Nikki pulled around a little red wagon containing turtles she named after the Teenage Mutant versions.  She also had a lizard, Rascal, who lounged on a cotton ball in front of the TV with her. 
    She and Natalie had gerbils, Snowball and Ginger, who never got along.  Garey was bitten one-two-many times while trying to corner one or the other of the escaped beasties, and decided they needed to live free in the cornfield in the bottoms.  (Many years into the future, scientists will be conjecturing on the origin of the large white gerbil-like field mice, native to Woodbury.)
    Natalie also decided she needed a parakeet, who didn’t fare well in a house with three cats; and Nikki kept chinchillas, which she took with her to Texas when she attended A&M (don’t go there if you don’t like a mess). 
    When I was growing up, animals were never allowed in the house.  There were seven kids, so our parents figured there were enough wild heathen to deal with without adding to their number.  That didn’t stop us from collecting beasts to tame outside.  We had a pony, Lightening, who was never tamed, despite my sister, Rhonda’s, occasional uppercut to one or the other of his jaws.  He would stagger back a bit, but when he regained his composure, he would continue to bite, kick or throw us.
    I don’t know what made my two younger sisters and I decide we would tame the big gray tomcat (Wildcat, by name) that hung around the edge of the property where we lived on Ashes Creek—probably boredom—but we made it our project one summer.
    We started out with sweet talk, telling him what a good kitty he was then we put out a bowl of scraps at the edge of the yard.  Each day, we would move the bowl a bit closer to the house until we finally coaxed him onto the screened-in back porch, where my stepmom kept shelves of glass canning jars. 
    We would stand at the back door leading from the porch into the kitchen and coo assurances to Wildcat.  He would sit and watch us after his meal, but if we made any attempt to come out onto the porch, he was off like a shot through the door that always stood ajar and into the back yard. 
    About mid-summer, the three of us had reached the end of our patience with the cat.  We decided the only way we were ever going to tame him would be to trap him and hold him captive, thereby forcing him to love us—a relationship method that we all know has worked well throughout the annals of time.
    The plan was this:  When Wildcat came onto the back porch that evening, my younger sisters would resume their places at the door leading into the kitchen, and distract him as he ate.  I would sneak around from behind the house and close the door leading from the porch to the backyard, thus trapping him on the screened-in porch.
    I’m not sure exactly how many canning jars he broke during the seven or eight laps he made around the porch, but my stepmom was not happy.  She was also not happy about the claw marks in the board walls of the porch or the shorn screen through which Wildcat escaped.
    Looking back, when you consider the size of that particular cat and his gray striped markings, he could have been the descendent of the Kentucky bobcat that prowled the woods adjoining the creek at that time.  Sometime before our moving to the area, there were probably three little girls who had “rescued” a bobcat and turned it into a household pet.  Wildcat could have been his progeny.
    My sisters and I learned a valuable lesson that summer: If you love something let it go.  The same principal also applies if you have any apprehension over the outcome of your stepmom’s canning jars.