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You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:23 am
by zoogirl
So, yesterday I had to stop by the pet store in my old neighbourhood and I was reminded of this one.
Back about twenty years ago I had a pretty good menagerie going. The pet shop enabled me every chance they got. I had all kids of oddball critters including small reptiles and amphibians.
One day, right around my birthday, in fact, I walked in and promptly fell in love. She was ugly and kind of sickly and they offered her to me for only ten bucks because they didn’t know if she was going to live. (She did.)
So what was this piece of amphibious wreckage? A big, fat, nasty Marine Toad!
I know, there’s no accounting for taste...
Anyway, I didn’t have ten bucks. I said I’d do my best, but I wasn’t sure I could get her. Sigh.
I went home and told my husband and kids all about her. I probably whined and I may have pulled out the puppy-dog eyes. I thinks it’s likely that I may have mentioned my impending birthday.
Apparently, it worked! A few days later, the old man trotted over to the pet store and asked for the toad. They packed her up in a clear bag and he went up to the cash register. The fellow in line behind him commented on the critter and my husband replied “I’m buying it for the wife. It’s her birthday present”. The guy looked at him, shocked.
“What? Are you mad at her?!”
Randy was still laughing when he handed me my birthday present!

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:38 am
by SteelMyHeart85420
Happy Birthday! lol

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:06 pm
by btrwtr
Takes a kind heart to take in and see the beauty in a pet like this.

Our family had a boxer pup that grew up with me from the time I was about ten. My mother always said that Kelly had a face that only a mother could love. Our whole family loved that dog.

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:10 pm
by djknife13
Zoogirl, I was never into toads or snakes, but when I was little Mom figured I would end up with a zoo in my room. I was always coming home with something that I found wounded or sick, mostly birds or cats or squirrels. Mom always was careful to check my pockets before washing my clothes. Years later, I had a full state and federal licensed game farm in my back yard for about 10 years when our kids were little. Now we are down to chickens, dogs and one snow bunting that one of our dogs found in the woods with a bad wing. That bird has lived with us for 4 years now. The dog is a blue healer/springer that finds hurt birds and chipmunks and brings them to "fix" and sits by them and guards them until they can be released. We raised a killdeer from an egg and that bird was completely tame and would come when you called it's name. It spend days out in the woods behind our country house guarded by our cocker spaniel and nights in a bird cage in our dining room or wandering around the house in the evening. It liked being picked up and handled. It said goodbye to me one morning with a little dance it repeated three times between flights around our yard and then went up above the trees and flew away. I'm sure it joined others from a farm down the road and migrated south. I fully understand the make a pet out of anything lifestyle. ___Dave

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2019 7:30 pm
by RobesonsRme.com
There was a very large piece of pastureland adjacent to our neighborhood when I was a boy. We played there often and knew every hill and wash. The land belonged to The Alabama Boy's Industrial School, a reformatory of sorts, but there were no guards, or fences.

That land had a wealth of killdeers, they loved the worms that inhabited cow patties, and quail.

Used to love to hear the call of the killdeer.

Would give a great deal just to hear them again, in the wild.

Beautiful and interesting birds, they were.

Charlie

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 10:22 pm
by Lansky1
btrwtr wrote:Takes a kind heart to take in and see the beauty in a pet like this.

Our family had a boxer pup that grew up with me from the time I was about ten. My mother always said that Kelly had a face that only a mother could love. Our whole family loved that dog.
I grew up with a boxer also, got him when I was 13. Boxers have the most expressive face in the dog world ... a tale can be told from those eyes alone. Bestest dogs ever ... ::ds::

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2019 10:45 pm
by Mumbleypeg
Charlie, we have a good crop of Killdeer (they’re more commonly called Killdee around here). We had one pair that for whatever reason made their nest in the middle of the gravel driveway in front of our house. Several years in a row, in basically the same spot! The nest was in the “hump” between the two tracks, and was hard to see if you didn’t look carefully. If one of the pair was at the nest when you walked by, it would do the “injured bird” act and try to lure you away from the nest. :lol:

Haven’t seen a nest there for several years but see them in the pastures often. I don’t know how they manage to keep coyotes, bobcats, roadrunners and other predators from destroying their nests and eating the eggs. The “bird nest on the ground” syndrome. But somehow they have survived.

Ken

Re: You got a WHAT for your birthday?!

Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:52 am
by btrwtr
Mumbleypeg wrote:Charlie, we have a good crop of Killdeer (they’re more commonly called Killdee around here). We had one pair that for whatever reason made their nest in the middle of the gravel driveway in front of our house. Several years in a row, in basically the same spot! The nest was in the “hump” between the two tracks, and was hard to see if you didn’t look carefully. If one of the pair was at the nest when you walked by, it would do the “injured bird” act and try to lure you away from the nest. :lol:

Haven’t seen a nest there for several years but see them in the pastures often. I don’t know how they manage to keep coyotes, bobcats, roadrunners and other predators from destroying their nests and eating the eggs. The “bird nest on the ground” syndrome. But somehow they have survived.

Ken
Killdeer commonly net in gravel and rocks for the very reason you said, they are very hard to spot and hidden from predators. The injured bird routine is used to lure predators away from the camouflaged nest.