<Begin Segment 16>

TL: I love the image that you gave us with yourself leading a parade of --

YB: Pets.

TL: Pets. [Laughs] And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more, about your experiences with those animals.

YB: Well you get quite attached to them. And they figure that you're a part of them and you get treated as such too sometime. My little billy goat never used his horn, but he'd take his head and really give you a shove if you don't watch out. When he would, I'd grab his horn and sit on him and then he'd leave me alone. And the ganders, when they have a brood of little ones, trotting around, are very protective of them, even if you, they know that you're not going to harm them. But if the gander comes with his neck sticking out, you better watch it! [Laughs] Because he's liable to grab your pants and slap his wings and, at you then you really get black and blue. So, in a time like that, I would grab his neck and sit on it. And then it would take off and leave me alone. Other people would run away and it just chases after you and really grabs you. But it was fun on the farm, all the pets and animals that we had. And the horses that were really tame.

TL: Were most of your chores related to helping with the upkeep of the animals or were there other chores that you remember?

YB: Well, I'd feed them, yes, and water them. And then we had to keep the grounds clean, because if they're trotting around the grounds, which I didn't always do. But, they were usually limited to the back yard. But the pets would always come trotting around the front. We had, Uncle had built a swing, it was a seat, a huge old seat that he put on the swing, under our pepper tree. And on hot days we'd swing on that. Then, the pets would come. Our dog would be the first one to sit, a little dog, the big one couldn't. Then the goose that was tame would come and want to get up, and it would sit some where on the space that's left. But the duck couldn't make it; it would pull on my shoestrings, nibble on my pant legs and do anything to get my attention. And so finally I would pick it up and put it on my lap. The chicken could get up, the duck was the last one, just couldn't make it up so I'd have to pick it up. They'd all be happy and I surely wish I had taken pictures of it, which we didn't.

TL: So you'd be swinging along with all of your pets.

YB: Yeah, yeah. These were incubator hatched, pets, were left without a mother and so, they followed after me.

TL: So they adopted you as the mother.

YB: Yeah, yeah. So they'd follow me wherever I'd go, we even had a raccoon in a cage. And we would let it out and it learned to (go) back in it's cage every night. Because we would put food in there. And we used to give it a half a watermelon; it would dig into it. Just like humans would dig in and eat. And it would love nice warm biscuits out of the oven. And he would know just about the time the biscuits were made and it would be waiting for it, so we'd entice (him) back into the cage with the biscuit. But one night he never did return. And my uncle said, "That's funny." And he was sleeping up in the tree. So he says, "Well maybe he'll be all right up there." But when (my uncle) got up in the morning, one chicken was gone. And that's what raccoons will do, they don't eat the chickens but they draw the blood out of the chicken, kill the chicken. And Uncle said, "If we let him stay up there all the time, he's going to do this every night." He says, "I got to kill it." I said, "Oh you can't kill that pet." So while I was gone to school, I think he killed it. They didn't tell me, but it was gone. We didn't have a raccoon after that.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.