…Or should it be ‘Animals that were crackers? You may well think that writing about animals in ‘Yesterday Remembered’ is a strange idea. Animal behaviour had not changed much in half a century. Has it? But the sort of pets I remember were strange and seem to reflect the personality of each of the last five decades:-
The 1940s – Britain Can Take It!
Could Britain, though, take the sight of my grandmother, my mother and me carrying a box with holes in it which contained a large cockerel on the tube through a wartime (1943) London? As we lived in Lincolnshire, you’d think there would have been plenty of opportunity to obtain one from a local farmer. But no! Portsmouth had suffered a lot of bombing, and we must rescue this bird and bring it by train to Lincolnshire. We would establish it in our back garden. This was the theory. The actuality was that he lived in the house, wanted to sit on the settee and generally ruled the roost (so to speak!) Sensing that it was a dominant male in a purely female household (my father was in the Navy) we found it guarded the gates like a watchdog. He wouldn’t let any relatives or friends in, so as you can imagine our social life suffered badly! He lived to a ripe old age and eventually died of natural causes.
1947 – Britain Suffers Under Snow
It also suffered under a surfeit of frogs – or at least in Grimsby. North Lincolnshire, it did. Whole roads turned completely green!
When the snows melted all the small ‘craters’ in the field near our house filled with water, which made an ideal breeding ground for the amphibians.
The 1950s- a Grammar School Speech Day The choir has just given its all in The Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. A small boy suddenly started scuffling about behind the speaker. His pet mouse, which he brought with him to alleviate boredom, had escaped. The audience watched fascinated while he tried to recapture it. The whole scene was straight from Just Williami!
The ‘Swinging Sixties’
The ‘swinger’ in this case, was an African grey parrot. He belonged to the local pet shop, which had encouraged him to wolf-whistle and use language which was a surprise to me to say the least! He was appearing in a play with the local Dramatic Society. As I was that lowly being, a stage manager, I was asked to take him home. Eager to please I did this, but also decided to take him to the local Junior School where I’d just started teaching. I always think parrots have an assessing look in their eye: this one had certainly assessed the situation pretty quickly and wolf-whistled his way through prayers, squawked “Hello Beautiful” and clicked its beak at the most unprepossessing child in the class and generally caused mayhem. He never stopped talking for a week, but when the time came for him to star in the play he stayed sullenly silent and was as dull as ditch-water.
The 1970s
Judy, a red setter bitch whose long, silky coat went with the hairstyles of the decade and definitely ‘did her own thing, never realising that we were supposed to be in charge!
Our present dog, a black standard poodle, is smart, attractive, and – as befits a dog living in the 1990s – user-friendly!
Perhaps our next pet, as we enter the Millennium, ought to be an animal with ‘Street Cred’? Any suggestions? Organising, bossy and assertive – or are we back to Grandma’s cockerel again?
Mary Walsham
