Our old farmhouse would not have been complete if it weren’t for the animals that lived alongside all of us kids. The peeling paint on our white wooden home and the streaked brown boards of the barn housed an array of pets, some tamed and others wild with only the attachment of food that our little fingers would throw out to them.
Starting small, my favorite pet of the past was Harry, a magnificent yellow parakeet. I loved Harry. I would take Harry out of its cage and play with him—pet his vibrantly highlighted feathers and accept his little love pecks as he nibbled my fingers with his pointed beak. It was well-known amongst the house that I was very close to Harry. One day, as easily as it ever does in such a large home with so many people, disaster struck. One of the twins, four years younger than I, had taken Harry out of his cage. Being a slightly temperamental bird, Harry was not keen on being touched that day. He rebelled. Making his way out of my younger sister’s grasp, he slipped off her shoulder and into her shirt. Of course, the twin was startled and began to pat her shirt down exuberantly, desperately trying to catch Harry and get him OUT of her shirt! Just as quickly as Harry had fallen into her shirt, he was caught and pulled out. He emerged with a twisted neck and a still heart. I was upset for an entire day and I can imagine how my young sister felt having accidently ended Harry’s little life.
We had multiple parakeets, and although Harry was my favorite, he was not my favorite death. That came with “Gordo.” That wasn’t really his name, but rather what he should have been dubbed. This little parakeet absolutely loved food. He couldn’t stop eating. Every time we looked into the cage, there he’d be: perched by his seeds pecking through his fifth or sixth meal of the morning. It was only appropriate that we found him a month into his Powell-home residency face first in the same seeds, his plump stomach collapsed over in his vice. If only he had stopped and considered dieting and exercise!
I realize this all sounds morbid—quite a way to begin a quaint story on animals and dear pets of the Powell home. I’ll move forward.
Like farm stories and films of old, there were always farm cats that roamed about the barn and beyond, catching mice with stealthy ease and mewing for food at the porch door. All across the Powell acres, gray and golden-striped tabbies and sleek ebony beauties tiptoed and bounded, leapt and sprawled. Every year brought new ones and lost some of the old. Ginny was the main female cat. She was thin and magnificent, short-haired and easy-tempered. She liked to keep to herself and she loved even more to get a bit frisky with the Tom cats of South Street. It became a game to us kids every summer— Ginny would get pregnant and then hide to have her kittens in a secretive, new place. We’ve found litters in closets, behind couches, in an old cradle in Dad’s workshop and a box in the barn. We’d watch them grow from tiny creatures to fluffy balls of energy and spunk to strapping teenagers. We gave most of these kittens away before they grew too much, since it’d be impossible to house them all across the property. Dad would not have any of that, although we would have been thrilled.
Rosie and Skipper were our two enormous Newfoundand dogs. I was very young when we had them, but I have very fond memories of them. We would run out in the field with both of them, hanging onto their furry ears, riding them about like horses and screaming with laughter into their muzzles as we buried our faces close to theirs. Unfortunately, Skipper was struck by a car and Rosie passed from a hip problem, if I remember correctly.
Sally came into our lives when I was starting junior high. She was an excitable golden retriever puppy with boundless energy and wet, sloppy kisses for everyone. My entire high school and college experience had Sally there, greeting me at the door with alerting barks and then a happy, wagging tail. Old age caught up to her quickly, though, causing her to tire very easily. My junior year of college marked her passing from our world and into doggy heaven.
With all the birds and the cats and dogs, we were never satisfied. We would trek our way to the back stream and catch everything possible: tadpoles and frogs, bugs and fish. There were deer sightings and bunny viewings, squirrels scurrying up into our tree house and birds getting caught in our chimney. Raccoons snuck their way into the trash cans and mice scurried in the barn. Bats swooshed over our heads in the night sky as we played in the warm summer air and crawfish were scooped up by our shiny red buckets.
Not to mention, there were twelve little animals running amok in the house every day.
