Dogs that have known me Part 2

 After my hard lesson of losing Kelley the Dalmatian in 1968, my next dog was a small, white mixed breed that we named Puff, I think after the magic dragon. Puff was sweet and manageable and at the time I was working in the local pet shop on the square in Marietta.  That was an after-school job a couple of days a week and I loved it.  I got to handle snakes, feed a Mata Mata turtle, play with a squirrel monkey that often got out of his cage, and just a general dog's body. 

Normally the turtle was given a goldfish that would happily swim around in the tank until this head quickly poked out of the shell and the goldfish disappeared in one fell swoop. One day when the owner had foolishly left me in charge, two of the local lads came in and after telling them about the various pets they asked what the turtle ate. Now, this thing looked like a rock sitting in a large aquarium and couldn't be arsed about people wanting to see it poke its head out.  I explained that we fed it goldfish which they could buy and I would feed it to the turtle.  They thought it would be more interesting to feed it something a bit larger and asked if they could buy a mouse to feed it.  I figure we would just end up with a wet mouse that could be returned to the cages so I figured a sale is a sale.  Now I regularly handled the mice since we had to kill one periodically to feed to the blind owl in the store.  Normally we just knocked the mouse out by whacking it on the counter which either stunned or killed it outright.  Only then could the owl feast on it.  So I happily sold the boys the mouse and they carefully dropped it in the tank. That little mouse did a splendid little dog paddle around the tank (who knew that mice could swim) and I thought that would be the end of it. After a few laps I thought could retrieve it and return it to the warmth of the mouse cage.  All of a sudden, in a move that could only be called ninja-like, there was a bubble and then only a mouse tail floating on top of the water. 

I also managed to take home two ducklings left over from the then-fashionable trend of selling them at Easter. I actually kept them in our suburban backyard, no doubt annoying the neighbours.  As I recall I named them Jemima, an obvious tip of the hat to Beatrix Potter, and Peccavi, another literary choice. We had a book, whose title escapes me, laying around the house that was a bit like To Kill a Mockingbird.  The main character has a pet (pig I think) that he names Peccavi which he loves to call for loudly. Google Charles James Napier to understand why this is funny. I loved that job as much as I loved Puff but sadly had to part with them both in 1970 when we went to live in California for the summer.