Fair results

Oh, not only that, but *dead* mice are the best source of botulism there is! Kill you in moment!

However, domestic species of mice, rats and pigeons all make the most fabulous pets! I've kept all sorts of animals in my lifetime and I have to say the mice have given me more day-to-day enjoyment than anything else. They're clever and funny and clean (NB. They live in a nice clean cage, not the sewer) and they live communally and have all sorts of funny little personality quirks. The only downside is that they have extremely short lives and leave one all too soon.

Pigeons are magnificent animals to keep too! Again, I don't mean the feral variety, infested with lice and tuberculosis that lives in railway stations and public buildings. I mean Carrier Pigeons or other fancy birds that live in a clean loft whence they can be released each day for exercise. There's *nothing* like the experience of standing beneath one's own flock as it flies overhead. The downdraught from the flight can be felt and the birds recognised from the ground so that one can watch the flight as it wheels under the sun *and then returns home* on call. I had a hundred pigeons in my flight and I knew them all by name and personality. They brought me extreme joy!

I haven't kept rats, but have many friends who do. They maintain their ratties are more sophisticated pets than my mice, since the ratties will hoard food and can be trained to do various things. Well, since my Ruaridh learned to walk a tightrope, I can say pooh-pooh to that! The members of Aus Rat'n'Mouse, (the fanciers' group to which I belong) are besotted with their rodents and go to enormous lengths to document pedigrees and genetic characteristics of their stud-stock.

I don't find any animal 'hateful'. Some, certainly, can be extremely inconvenient. With respect: you haven't known flies until you come to Australia and experience ours. There's a reason we speak with our mouths half-closed! Still, they're all part of the larger interacting system and each has its place. Observing them in their environment is the greatest pleasure of all (to me, at least).

I was talking about mice that came into the house from the garden - not that I worried about them - my old cat soon put paid to them.

They were definitely hateful when they got into my daughters cottage, they multiplied throughout the winter months and were a plague when they returned in the spring.

We did have the odd cultivated mouse as the kids were growing up, I didn't find them particularly great but their redeeming feature was that they didn't last too long.

There are NO pleasures at all when in contact with the Black Fly in Canada, I defy any Canadian to extol them.

Can't say anything about Black Fly because I haven't had to deal with them.

If gerbils count as in the mouse family, I've been there and done that and I will admit that while I didn't hate them, I sure as heck didn't love to clean up their yucky cage or watch them devour their young if we didn't get there fast enough.

Pigeons to my way of thinking are just flying, filthy rats. What can you like about something that flies above your head in Central Park and gets it's jollies by pooping on your head. ick, ack, ptui.

Lucille

Lucille

I couldn't....

Cheryl

Thank you Joan Liz kindly sent me a link + elaborate explanation about the idea of those Fairs ,, Oh i believe a PRIZE is A PRIZE , never mind if it is small or huge ,, Best congratulations on getting the prizes !!! Do you have a special place on the Wall , where you put all your Ribbons etc,,,? mirjam

Sure you could! After all, they look pretty darned good on the green! :)

Joan

No, right now some are in my cedar chest and some in my stitching cabinet. I'm toying with the idea of making some sort of quilt out of them. Someday, after I've accumulated a *bunch* more! :)

Joan

Not knowing your flies, I will testify to the nastiness of black flies!

I'm still wondering what the purpose of wood ticks and deer ticks is, since nothing seems to eat them and they're a huge nuisance (and danger, where the deer tick is concerned) to pets and people!!!! :)

Joan