MY PETS

MY PETS

Real Happenings in My Aviary

By Marshall Saunders Author of “Beautiful Joe”

Illustrated from Photographs

Philadelphia The Griffith & Rowland Press

Copyright 1908 by the American Baptist Publication Society

Published August, 1908

From the Society’s own Press

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to those of my boy and girl friends who are never satisfied with a story unless it is entirely true. While the most of my stories are partly true, I have never before written one that is entirely and wholly true in every particular. The story of my aviary and the pets in it is taken from my diaries, and many of the birds are still living and moving and having their being, and are always glad to see any girls and boys who call on them, if they do not come in too great numbers at one time.

Marshall Saunders.

Boston, January, 1908.

CONTENTS

LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I THE STORY OF TWO OWLS

The birds that really started me in the serious, and yet amusing task of keeping an aviary, were two little Californian screech owls.

The year was 1899, and I was studying boy life in the charming Belmont School, twenty-five miles from San Francisco. The grounds of the school lie on the lower slope of hills that enclose an open valley fronting the bay of San Francisco. A walk of twelve miles took us to the shores of the Pacific. Close to the school were beautiful cañons that the boys and older persons were never tired of exploring. The lads of the school were allowed to keep dogs, horses, pigeons, poultry—indeed, any pets they chose to have. One day, when I was up in the poultry yard, where there were some choice bantams and game-fowl, I saw a boy trotting about with a box in his hand.

“What have you there?” I asked.

“Four little owls,” he replied. “I got them the other day when I was out walking, and I had their mother too, but she has flown away.”

“What are you going to do with them?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he replied thoughtfully. “I don’t want to bother with them. I suppose it would be best to kill them.”

I looked in the box. Those four solemn-eyed, motherless balls of down appealed to me. In southern California I had been very much taken with the little owls that sat on hillocks, and turned their heads round and round to look after any one riding or driving by, until it really seemed as if they would twist them off.

I felt that I must adopt these little Northerners, so I said to the boy, “I will take them.”

He joyfully resigned his charges, for he did not like the idea of destroying them, and I thoughtfully pursued my way to my room; what did owls eat?

I asked everybody I met, and the universal recommendation was, “Give them raw meat. That is the best substitute for the birds, mice, and insects that their parents catch for them.”

I went to the Japanese cook, and with a friendly grin he seized a huge knife and swung himself down the hill to the meat-room.

On receiving a piece of beef, I minced it fine, and dropped small morsels into the open beaks of my new pets. They were hungry, and after eating, nestled down together and went to sleep.

The days are mild, but the nights are chilly about the bay of San Francisco. So after their latest supper, I put a rubber bag of hot water under their nest and covered them up for the night.

In the morning I hurried to their basket, and uncovered the nest I had made for them. They were as warm as toast, and four wide-open beaks pleaded eloquently for food. I cut up more meat, and for days fed them when hungry, and carried them out of doors in the sunshine, where they were objects of interest to every one about the place, especially to the dogs that would fain have devoured them.