My
parents got me some silk worms to keep as pets. I don’t know if it was as an
educational project or just to try and stop me from tormenting the creatures
that lived outside. I do know that I absolutely loved them. They lived in a box
with holes cut out in the top for air. Every evening on our way back from the
nursery my mother worked at we’d find a mulberry tree and pick some leaves off.
I’d replenish their leaf supply and feed them the next day. I found them
fascinating. I would spend ages watching their soft white bodies crawl over the
leaves in the box. They finally made cocoons and I learnt about how they will
emerge as moths. My father told me that it’s at this point they would be thrown
into boiling water in order for the cocoons to be used for silk making. The
idea of this really upset me. How could anyone do that to the helpless
silkworms? I was even more upset when they emerged from their cocoons and died
soon after. I now know that this is normal, but I was convinced that the box
just wasn’t big enough for them, that they needed to be set free and I’d been
selfish to keep them the way I had. Even though it ended up in upset, it was a
wonderful gift to have and I learnt so much more from watching it all enfold in
front of me than I ever could in class.
There
was no animal, it seems, that I didn’t want as a pet. I was particularly fond
of frogs. We had a paddling pool in the back garden of our house and it had
stayed up all summer. At some point Alistair threw a spade load of soil into
the pool before my mother could stop him. The next day we looked into the pool
to discover earthworms swimming in the corner that the soil had been thrown
into and a frog floating around in circles. Initially we thought it was dead,
but it turns out it was just doing laps around the paddling pool. My eyes light
up. I grabbed a Tupperware container, filled it with all sorts of things I
decided a frog would need. Things like stones and soil to sit on and a water
area for it to swim in. I then carefully placed my new friend into the
container and put it on our dining room table. A few days later the frog was
gone. My parents told me he must have escaped. I know now that they actually
set it free. It’s probably the only time that they’ve lied to me about our
animals. It was probably easier for us all than the truth: that they’d let the
poor captive creature free to where it belonged.
My
school was just down the road from my mother’s work, so every evening I’d walk
up there and wait for her to finish work and for us to be picked up by my
father. One of these afternoons I heard one of the teachers shrieking and saw
her throw something in the bin. It was another frog. I couldn’t have that
happen, and so I whipped out my lunchbox and in the frog went. I proceeded to
take it home with me. As we drove up to the house I decided to take a look at
it and out it jumped in the car and down the side of the seat. My parents at
this point had had enough of my insect capturing, frog keeping ways and told me
I had better find it and then put it in the canal behind out house. It took a
while, but I eventually found the poor thing cowering under the seat. I rescued
it for a second time and reluctantly set it free in the less than sanitary
looking canal behind our house. I think if I’d had my way a pond would have
been built for it and it would have remained with us forever.
By
not discouraging myself or my brother from exploring the natural world, we
learnt so much about the creatures that lived around us. My father was an
encyclopaedia of information, telling us facts about the creatures we’d
captured. When he finally ran out of knowledge, I had actual encyclopaedias to
read from. I learnt about pray mantises and how they would bite the heads of
their mates off after mating. I learnt about crickets, and how they made the
sound they did by rubbing their legs together. I was thirsty for knowledge and
my explorations allowed me to learn so much. My grandmother had a chameleon
that lived at the bottom of her garden, my mother would take me to feed it
whenever we went to visit. They also had tortoises as pets that just ambled
about freely, only taken inside when the weather got cold and they went into
hibernation. It was a wonderful environment to grow up in. I don’t know that I
would have had the same sort of experiences growing up in England. I mean, for
sure there aren’t the same sort of insects and creatures living over here, but
at the same time there just isn’t as much of an outdoor life. It’s a shame,
because I honestly believe a child learning about its environment in the way I
did, through discovery and then questions, is the best possible way to learn about
it. It instils a sort of respect for the creatures that we live amongst, and
definitely reduces our fear of them. It also creates more of a curiosity. I
still love learning about the natural world, and I’m at my happiest when I can
go outside and muck about in the garden. While I care for the plants or plant
new ones, I’m constantly trying to find the creatures that live amongst them. I
have since learnt that aphids are bastards and snails are the biggest pains in
a gardener’s backside, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find them interesting.
Although I wish they could be interesting in someone else’s garden.
The
only time I came close to being absolutely terrified of a spider came when I
was staying with my grandmother. As part of my degree I chose to do a year
abroad and chose to go to South Africa, to get to know the country of my birth
a bit more as well as spend time with the family I hardly ever see. During the
university holidays I spent a lot of time staying with my grandmother. She
lived in a caravan park, where the caravans could be built around, as long as
the structure was temporary and the caravan could be moved. So no foundations
and lots of wood. When my grandparents retired they moved there, this place
very close to where we would always go on holiday as a family around Christmas.
My grandfather built the property for them, they both planted the garden that
surrounded it. Granddad died far too soon after completing it, right when they
should have been enjoying their retirement together.
I
spent a lot of my time with my grandmother as she was lonely and after my
grandfather died I became more aware of how little time you often have with
those you care about. One of the days when I was with her she was on the phone
to my uncle Allan. My uncle is the tallest one of the family. He’s both tall
and big. He’s not really someone you would think to mess with, although he is
the stereotypical gentle giant and wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s also absolutely
terrified of spiders. I’ve never seen a funnier sight than him jumping onto a
stool, shrieking in fright as a spider scuttled across the living room.
As
my grandmother spoke to my uncle, we noticed that there was a pretty big spider
on the walls. No, I don’t mean big by English terms. The spider was bigger than
my hand. I measured it and without its legs being spread out properly it
measured at about 4 inches long. It was probably at least twice that spread out.
It was easily the size of my face. My grandmother said it was a baboon spider.
Whatever it was, it was definitely a tarantula of sorts. She usually used the
hoover to suck it up, then set it free outside. I couldn’t bear the thought
that the spider might get hurt and so, as she described in great detail to my
uncle, I went and got an empty 2 litre ice cream container. I picked up a piece
of paper, put the container over the spider and slipped the paper underneath.
The
paper wasn’t thick enough and the spider escaped. I ran screaming across the
room, jumped on the sofa and turned back, convinced it was after me. I could
hear my uncle, panic in his voice, asking my grandmother what happened. By this
time she was bent over double on her chair, laughing so much that she had tears
in her eyes. Not to be defeated I went back and picked up a piece of thick
cardboard. I slipped over the ice cream tub, slipped under the cardboard and
carefully lifted everything up, holding tight to the tub and cardboard. I don’t
quite know what I would have done had it escaped from that. I carefully put
everything down and set it free, backing off pretty quickly. After I watched
the spider crawl under the fence, I went outside and took the cardboard and ice
cream tub inside. I was quite proud that, even though I’d freaked out and felt
a bit panicky after that I’d managed to go back and rescue the poor thing.
Spiders
and insects were replaced with normal household pets when we moved to England.
One of the first things my parents did, once we had a place to live and once
our stuff had arrived was to get two cats. My mother loves cats. My father
pretends not to care, yet when no one is looking he’ll be the first to
encourage the cat onto his lap. Alistair and I came home from school to find
two kittens running about the place. He didn’t realise what they were and
screamed “BUNNY!” in excitement as he chased the first cat under a piece of
furniture. He was still as excited when he realised it was a cat and not a
bunny after all.
The
kittens were to be our first real pets. Yes we’d had pets before, but they’d
been more household pets and we’d had no responsibility for them. This time it
was different. I had one cat, who I called Mischief after he kept me awake
several nights in a row, Alistair had the other, who he called Tom, because
that’s what male cats are called. They were adorable, even though they got in
the way a fair bit, particularly on the stairs. Tom was lean and liked to hunt,
Mischief was chubbier and, while he liked to play, he also just liked to sit
and be petted. Strangely enough, every time we’ve gotten cats that seems to be
the way they pan out: Alistair gets the active hunter, I get the chubbier one
that prefers to stay at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave a comment!