Editorial

Pet Education Program in Schools - "Children & Pets" at MIPE 2002

DBKL ruling on Licensing of Dogs

Love Is Not Spelled
" T-R-E-A-T"

A Legacy Of Love

A Legacy Of Love,

By Anna Edward

"Quickly," my Dad whispered, still peering intently through the dining room curtains. My brother and I raised our eyebrows at this intriguing summons but were just as quick to dump our school satchels and scamper over to the window.

"What are we looking at?" I whispered excitedly. "There!" my father said, "down by the drain, do you see him?"

And true enough, there he was. A grey rat almost the size of a squirrel. He was sitting on his haunches, holding the prune seed my Dad had just thrown out the window and was rotating it between his front paws, delicately nibbling at the bits and pieces of fruit still stuck to the kernel. "Look at the dexterity of his movements," my father whispered excitedly. "Quick, let's give him another prune to eat". Eager to comply, my brother rushed off to the kitchen to return with a carton of prunes which were dutifully, and gleefully, thrown out to the rat - much to his amazement I'm sure!

"What's going on here?" my mother inquired, coming into the dining room. The sound of her raised voice caused the rat to beat a hasty retreat under the back veranda. "Mom!" my brother and I wailed in unison. "Look what you've done!"

"Don't worry," my dad said. "He'll come out soon enough."

When given an animated account of what had transpired, my mum shook her head in dismay. "Oh no!" she said. "There's no way that you are going to encourage that rat to find a permanent home here."

But three against one meant that she was heavily out-voted and the rat, christened Gabriel for some strange reason that now eludes me, was here to stay - for a while at least.

Our love affair with animals big and small began at a very early age. My Dad had a fascination for all living things and took delight in pointing out the brilliant colours on a butterfly's wings; or the fact that you could make a praying mantis dance by gently waving a knotted handkerchief in front of it.

Taking residence in a government bungalow that had remained vacant for years held further delight for us kids who were still in primary school and yet to know the true meaning of fear. The compound was surrounded by rainforest trees and due to the dense overgrowth, was festooned with grass snakes that occasionally fell from the treetops onto the ground - much to our delight and my mother's horror.

A pair of owls nesting in the trees provided further entertainment although many of my father's friends and well meaning relatives were quick to point out that these birds of prey were a bad omen. "Hogwash!" my dad would snort. And just to prove them wrong would bring home reading material that talked about the lives of the creatures that inhabited our compound.

"Most of their fear stems from ignorance," he would say. "You should always arm yourselves with knowledge so that you understand why every creature has a place on this earth." He would have loved Astro's Animal Planet and National Geographic channels!

His work as one of the pioneer engineers on the East-West Highway resulted in an even greater abundance of strange and, to me at least, exotic creatures making a pit stop at our house. I remember seeing my first 'giant' millipede, almost a foot long, and at least 1.5 cm in circumference - carefully carried home in a bell jar for us to "Ooh!" and "Aah!" over and just as carefully returned to the jungle from whence it came, the next day.

A succession of giant sized beetles, grasshoppers and earthworms followed suit and it got to a stage where even his colleagues would stop work to point out something of interest that he could bring home to show us; a bark scraping, an interesting piece of driftwood, an abandoned bird's nest and once, even a piece of skin that had been shed by a snake. My dad practiced his own code of values and firmly believed that we should leave nature as we find it. Look and learn, but never try to take away or destroy.

From my dad, I learned how to appreciate the birds and the bees - literally! Each time that I am fascinated with an animal's antics, or able to do a good deed for an animal in need, I am reminded of him. Although he is no longer with us, his legacy of love lives on.