Hey, Fred. Is That You?

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Neither one of you has experienced a day of life without an animal around.  First there was the fab cat duo of José and Loki.  Now you have Thor and Bitta, a cat duo for sure, but not quite so fab.  Pets certainly enhance our lives, bringing comfort to us in many ways that even humans can not.  At least your parents have limited your in-house exposure to animals capable of domestication.  Not so growing up at 3 Lakecrest.

Oh, we had the typical dog and cat combos for sure.  If you were to march through the woods below the house even today, you’d probably find the headstones of Pepper and Curly and Jinx.  But, on many occasion, 3 Lakecrest was more like a menagerie.

There was the time when your great uncle Bryant decided that he could make some money by providing guinea pigs to research labs.  He and granddaddy Schaefer constructed a cage in the basement with a wire door that swung open from right to left and three trays that pulled out on rollers for easy cleaning.  Bryant filled each tray with straw and apparatus for feeding and watering.  He then purchased three pairs of pigs – one male and one female – and put a pair in each tray.  I’m sure it took a little longer than this, but it seemed that in about a week we had 50 guinea pigs in the cage constantly squealing and rooting around at all hours of the day and night. 

The kicker was that Mamaw Mary became so attached to all the pigs that she bought each one from Bryant at the going rate.  Then she named them and proceeded to bring them upstairs to “play and get out of the cage for a while.”  Nothing like eating your pancakes in the morning before school with a guinea pig at the edge of your plate staring you down.

In addition to the dogs and cats, we also had a chicken (that story will be told later), a rabbit in a hutch outside, and an aquarium full of tropical fish.

I never will forget sometime in the late 60’s, some of my Furman friends had come from the campus over to 3 Lakecrest for dinner.  It was in the fall, but still very hot and humid in Greenville.  We all were sitting around the picnic table in the kitchen.  Since we had no air conditioning, all the windows were open as well as the back door with the screen door shut.  The screen, however, had a hole in it……… through which flew a gigantic beetle of some kind who darted around the kitchen with a great menacing buzz, dive bombing everybody.

The beetle landed on the table right in front of Luke Curtis who sat frozen as if not knowing what to do.

“Luke!  Get him,” I yelled.

To which he replied…. “I was going to, but I wanted to make sure nobody called him by name first!”