The Gorge House: Pets

When I was very young I had a kitten of my very own. It was a sweet, soft grey thing, probably called Pussy Willow. I loved it lavishly, until it died mysteriously. The mystery was solved when Mum discovered an elastic band around its neck. As it grew, it had strangulated itself.

Faith had a black and white cat called Patricia Herbaceous. She was all right, because she allowed herself to be dressed in doll clothes and taken for rides in the doll carriage, but otherwise was pretty uninteresting. After several years she gave birth to a single kitten. (Could others not have survived their first moments?) This unfortunate kitten died when it was a few days old. It was buried in the vegetable garden with due funeral rites. Patricia Herbaceous went into deep mourning. She wandered around the place night and day, howling in a most blood-curdling manner, and would not be consoled. She was never the same again. She never attempted another litter. Eventually she became paralyzed in her hindquarters, and died a lingering death, poor thing.

Brownie was a golden cocker spaniel. Connie always claimed he was her dog, since he arrived when she was a baby. The neat thing about Brownie was that he had a steady job. He worked for the postman. Dogs in those days didn’t need to be under leash as they do today, they just roamed freely wherever they wanted. Brownie made friends with the postman, who had an unenviable route, up and down Parkview Drive hill, then the same for Heath hill, and Dysart, carrying his heavy mail satchel up and down half a dozen times each day. He trained our Brownie to guard his mail bag at the bottom of each hill, while he delivered only the mail he needed for each block. Brownie would get a biscuit when he came down the hill again. One day, Brownie simply disappeared. Dad contacted the SPCA, we may even have put an ad in the Victoria Times, to no avail. He had disappeared without a trace. Gone for good. Then one day, there he was, back again, except that two years had gone by! Where he had been all that time we never found out; Brownie wasn’t talking. He was in good health when he returned, and even had a new red collar. He was not so patient with us now, however, he was growing older, and eventually gained a lot of weight and became dull and lethargic.

Frank tried a number of pets. At one time he had white rats, with ruby eyes. He was training them to do tricks, but since they tended to be short lived, and had to be replaced frequently, he eventually got tired of retraining the new recruits, and let them fade away. Turtles were also a temporary phase. They had tropical scenes painted on their backs. Rabbits were lodged in a shed on the back of the garage. One night, dogs got at them, and Dad had to dispose of the survivors by slitting their throats.

More successful was the flock of bantams. A chicken-wire enclosure was put up, connected to the shed, where the chickens had their roosts and nesting boxes. The miniature rooster was a lovely creature, bright red and yellow, brilliant red comb and wattles, and an iridescent blue-black tail that was a wonder to behold. The hens produced a few eggs a day, which Frank sold to Mum. The eggs were tiny, two were needed to take the place of one regular egg. At times they would be streaked with blobs of blood; disgusting. No one would eat soft boiled eggs. Some of the hens became broody in the spring, and would sit on a clutch of eggs, producing lovely little chicks.

When a hen became old and non-productive, it found its way to the pot. At first Dad looked after its dispatch, but the time came when Frank was told to take over. These were his chickens; he had to look after every aspect of their care. An elderly hen was selected, Frank was instructed in the finer points of the job, and left to it. Well, for days he was too busy, or conveniently forgot, but at long last he had to face the dreaded chore. The unfortunate hen was carried by her legs to the chopping block. An excited audience gathered round the site of the execution. Frank swung, and missed. A mad scramble to retrieve the terrified chicken and get her in place once more. This time the axe got her well and truly, but not quite; she flapped and floundered all around the yard, dripping blood, scattering feathers, and causing more than one onlooker to retch.

Frank was badly shaken, it was a horrible thing. Mum retrieved the hen when she finally stopped flopping around. She had the job of drawing her, and plucking out her feathers. Then the chicken would be cooked, always tough, and not enough meat to make a decent stew even. I remember one chicken, which, on being drawn, turned out to be full of eggs in various stages of development. Some were encased in a soft proto-shell, others in graduated sizes down to very minuscule baby eggs. Obviously, the wrong hen had been selected.

Ducky arrived in Connie’s Easter basket. It was thought appropriate to include delightful fuzzy ducklings, baby chicks, and rabbits in an Easter gift, more wholesome than chocolate, I suppose. No one cared to think of what might become of the poor little creatures. Ducky was fortunate, however. He got Connie to look after him. Connie and Ducky were smitten with each other from the first. Connie was a most loving caregiver, and Ducky followed her around dotingly. I think he thought he was some kind of human, not ever knowing any other ducks. He lived in the chicken coop, but was allowed the freedom of the back yard whenever we were around.

                                                                                                   Ducky

One day, Mum came in from the garden, highly incensed. Someone had been stealing peas from the vegetable patch, splitting open the pods and taking the peas, leaving the pods attached. None of us would confess to the crime; though we were all guilty of stealing our share of the peas, we would never leave the empty pod on the stem, that would be just advertising our crime. At last the perpetrator was caught in the act; it was Ducky, feasting on all the peapods he could reach.

He developed such a taste for peas that, birdbrain that he was, he figured anything small and round would be a delicious pea. Thus, he pursued any of Chris’s marbles abandoned in the yard. Fortunately they were just too big for him to swallow, or he would have choked himself.

Connie and I that summer had matching red and white striped dresses, fastened at the neck by two round white buttons like tiny ping-pong balls. Ducky was forever nibbling at our throats, trying to get at these tantalizing pseudo peas. As the season progressed, he graduated to hard, green concord grapes, which must have had a very sour taste.

One night there was a thunder storm. Ducky, out in the chicken coop, began quacking in terror. He made a horrendous racket. Connie got out of bed and went to him, in nightie and bare feet, and sat with him cradled in her arms until the storm abated.

Ducky came swimming at Heath landing every day. Sometimes he would travel in the doll buggy, but more often he would just follow us across the Gorge Road, bringing up the rear of a parade of young swimmers. It was quite a sight for motorists, we had no difficulty stopping traffic. Once in the water, of course, Ducky was in his element. He never strayed from where we were, just happily duck-dived over and over again, bringing up morsels of weed in his beak, quacking rapturously.

The Chinese vegetable man who came every week in his black Ford truck took a great interest in Ducky. “Fine Duck,” he would say to Connie, nodding and grinning. As the season advanced, and Ducky grew into a handsome, plump white duck, he became even more interested. “Fine duck. I buy?” Connie was horrified. Sell Ducky? Never! But the summer came to an end at last, it was now too cold for our daily swim, and our lives were filled with school and indoor activities. Ducky spent more and more of his time alone. “I buy duck. Two dollah ?” Still Connie was adamant, but she thought about it. Two dollars would go a long way towards buying Christmas presents. The Chinaman obviously had a duck farm, such as we had seen out in Saanich, a group of contented ducks loafing around a duck pond where they could dabble to their hearts’ content. Would Ducky like it there? Well, maybe. As long as the Chinaman would promise to take good care of him. He would, he nodded and grinned even more widely. Money changed hands. Ducky rode off in a wicker basket, heading for a duck paradise on an idyllic farm. Tears were shed.

That night at supper Frank ruminated about the strange, obscene objects we’d seen hanging from their webbed feet in Chinese butcher stores. You could still make out what remained of their beaks and their lusterless dead eyes, what used to be their body turned a revolting glistening red.

Next:

The Gorge House: The Store