FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153  
154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  
you could a dormouse; the most you can do is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to live in, and teach him to come out in response to a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, to take a fly from your fingers and go back again to its bottle. An acquaintance of the writer is partial to adders as pets, and he handles them as freely as the schoolboy does his innocuous ring-snake; Mr. Benjamin Kidd once gave us a delightful account of his pet humble-bees, who used to fly about his room, and come at call to be fed, and who manifested an almost painful interest in his coat buttons, examining them every day as if anxious to find out their true significance. Then there was my old friend, Miss Hopely, the writer on reptiles, who died recently, aged 99 years, who tamed newts, but whose favourite pet was a slow-worm. She was never tired of expatiating on its lovable qualities. One finds Viscount Grey's pet squirrels more engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a wood in Northumberland, who quickly find out when he is at home and make their way to the house, scale the walls, and invade the library; then, jumping upon his writing-table, are rewarded with nuts, which they take from his hand. Another Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or kept, a pet cormorant, and finds him no less greedy in the domestic than in the wild state. After catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a neighbouring river, he wings his way home at meal-times, screaming to be fed, and ready to devour all the meat and pudding he can get. The list of strange creatures might be extended indefinitely, even fishes included; but who has ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which one may buy at any dealer's, but a common brown rat, _Mus decumanus_, one of the commonest wild animals in England and certainly the most disliked. Yet this wonder has been witnessed recently in the village of Lelant, in West Cornwall. Here is the strange story, which is rather sad and at the same time a little funny. This was not a case of "wild nature won by kindness"; the rat simply thrust itself and its friendship on the woman of the cottage: and she, being childless and much alone in her kitchen and living-room, was not displeased at its visits: on the contrary, she fed it; in return the rat grew more and more friendly and familiar towards her, and the more familiar it grew, the more she liked the rat
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153  
154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   >>  



Top keywords:
writer
 

strange

 

squirrels

 
bottle
 

friend

 

familiar

 

recently

 

variety

 

included

 

fishes


extended

 
indefinitely
 

catching

 
swallowing
 
domestic
 

cormorant

 

greedy

 

morning

 

neighbouring

 

pudding


devour

 

screaming

 

creatures

 

simply

 

kindness

 
thrust
 

friendship

 

nature

 

cottage

 

return


contrary

 

friendly

 
visits
 

displeased

 

childless

 

kitchen

 

living

 

decumanus

 

commonest

 

animals


England
 
common
 

dealer

 

disliked

 

Cornwall

 
Lelant
 

witnessed

 
village
 
artificially
 

delightful