Our furry, winged and finned friends

Animal Meme

Wouldn't you do absolutely ANYTHING for him? I found this meme on one of the science blogs I read - Pondering Pikaia. The Ragazzo and I desperately want a dog but neither our apartment building nor our lives will admit one right now, so it appealed to my puppy-envy. I’ve adapted it slightly for us literary types.

An interesting animal I had:
The only pets I have ever actually owned were two gerbils – frisby and scooter - not very interesting, I know. But in the realm of stuffed creatures, we have an elephant and a pink pig that oinks three times.

An interesting animal I ate:
I’ve eaten ostrich and bison (grilled), goat (sauteed with cilantro), and sea urchin (as sushi) and I confess, I liked them all.

An interesting animal you’ve seen in the Museum, library, or its natural habitat:
I remember being about 7 years old and going over to my friend Larry’s house. His father was a physicist and had a beautiful library of science books including some beautiful old research volumes on natural history. We had a ritual where he would look up unusual animals and we would act them out – dress up like them, move like them, make sounds like them. I remember remarkably clearly his reading about a bird with a large tail (a colorful blanket tucked into the back of my pants) that ran backwards. I don’t remember its sound, but I remember running backwards in a circle for quite a while in the kind of hysteria kids can get into. Does anyone know what bird this could be? I’ve tried looking it up with no luck.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal
Oh dear, what a question. The most interesting story that I’ve done to an animal, unfortunately, was kill it. I was in charge of tending to the snails in a parisitology lab many moons ago. One day I had to anesthetize a few but I killed them outright because no one had taught me to use the lab’s digital scale to measure and I put in one decimal place too much (10x too much) anesthetic. Ooops. That limited my interest in escargot for several years.

And a question I am adding for the bookish among us – a favorite literary animal (that can be a literary character or a whole piece about an animal)
Virginia Woolf’s Flush – the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel. It’s delightful fun. I also remember enjoying Paul Auster’s Timbuktu quite a lot. I’ve read neither of them recently enough to say anything more meaningful.

I won’t tag but please join in if you’d find it fun.