do you have any pets
uh right now i have um uh two longhair miniature dachshunds
i also raise uh peacocks ducks i have three different kinds of ducks and i raise geese and rabbits
but the uh uh the dogs and the peacocks are pets the rest of them we we do those for food
you must have a little farm then
yeah yeah we live out in the country
so what do you have
well i'm a i'm a sort of a city dweller and i got a bunch of kids so they've got to have their pets
and uh we've uh lost a few this year but we've still got a dog and a bird left
uh-huh
and uh
the the kids maul the dog something awful they pull his tail and bend his ears and uh
have a good time playing with him and the dog is pretty uh tolerant of them
yeah that's that's always nice when you have an animal that the kids can play with like that how old are the kids
well they're uh seven eight and uh ten
huh you said your from DC
and
yes well right outside in uh Falls Church Virginia
I have
oh okay i have a
my my i have a daughter i think she's in Spring Field i'm not sure she's around there somewhere she just got her a new apartment
yeah
and my other daughter and son-in-law live in Germantown
uh-huh
so
there
well you've got part of your family up here then
yeah yeah so it's
interesting to talk to somebody from that general vicinity
yeah
well uh i just got a new bird for uh little Deb at uh Christmas time and we're still in the process of uh getting him tamed he's a little parakeet yellow one
yeah
and uh we let him fly around the house
and the dog being a Golden Retriever he he pays close attention whenever that bird is flying around
i wonder what he'd do if he ever got a hold of him though
well the the previous bird he uh got a hold of it uh two or three times
and uh
i found that uh well one occasion i i heard a little noise and i saw the dog walking away and i looked over and i see some feathers sticking out of his mouth
oh oh
and i grabbed the dog by the tail real quick and i discovered if you yank a dog's tail real hard he lets go of a bird
next time you'll have to try a bigger bird
yeah
a bigger bird or a larger cat to take care of the dog
we have some friends that in fact the ones that we bought one of the dogs from they also raise birds and they have uh
two or three different kinds of of parrots and then they raise finches and parakeets and they show
and he and he was showing me his parakeets and and he calls them an English parakeet and he said their marking is a little different
uh-huh
have did did you know that there was a difference in the parakeets
well there is a a neighbor of mine used to uh uh know quite a bit about uh raising parakeets
and she had uh a lot of connections when it came to getting good birds
so she was knowledgeable all the different breeds and colorations and so forth
yeah
and knew what to look for when you went shopping for a parakeet
uh i had a parakeet many years ago that uh she got for me
and it lived to be a a pretty old bird
and was extremely friendly
uh i i couldn't keep him in his own cage he just uh flew lose in the house all the time
uh but uh more recent years they moved away and i've been buying parakeets at the local pet shop
and they don't seem to be as healthy as uh one's you get from uh breeders
you might check uh some of the ads in the paper and see if anybody has an aviary that you might be able to buy from there
yeah
that seems to be an up and coming business i know out there where we are there's there's uh a person on each side of our
county that now have aviaries
uh-huh
one of them is right out there close to us they're in the process of building it up right now
i know
well we found in general when you you look for breeders you don't find them in the uh metropolitan areas
they you wind up going many miles out of town to find somebody that's handling whatever it is you're looking for
uh-huh
we went looking for uh rabbits
and we had to go all the way out to Leesburg to find uh a rabbitry a few years back
weren't any uh rabbits available in this area except little bunnies available at the uh pet shops
and we looked at them and decided they weren't uh too healthy looking
yeah that's the problem with buying them through the pet shops we have that same problem here too
yeah but we've used it we just have two rabbits right now we have one doe and one buck
uh-huh
and she ought to be due sometime toward the end of this week on a litter we just got her
yeah
the uh
we go we had uh one doe that we'd had
her
let's see it was her second litter i guess the first litter she had she lost all but three
uh babies and we raised those and then her second litter
she wound up killing all of them
huh
and it took her like three days i guess before she killed all of them so we've we had to get rid of her
yeah
so i i
wouldn't tolerate that
that's pretty unusual because we i've generally found that rabbits have been very uh very good parents
yeah well this is the first time we've ever had one like that we had been down we had
gone from having one buck and and three does down to one buck and just one doe
uh-huh
but that didn't work out too well so now we're we're trying to build it back up
yeah we had a rabbit up until uh last summer and we gave him away because the girls lost interest in him and couple of them we're getting allergic to rabbits
uh
i uh we had a tough time deciding on a name so i named him uh Mister Tibbar
and they wanted to know how i figured out that name and i said well it's rabbit spelled backwards
so uh
one of my other daughters got a uh gerbil and they came to me for a name and i said well name him Libreg
and they said well how did you get that name i said well that's gerbil spelled backwards
now that's a good idea
well they wouldn't let me name the dog
no that one would might get you in trouble
yeah unless you called it Dog
well
we have been known to do that in the past we've we've got a couple of wild cats out there in our general vicinity
and you know they're they're tame enough that they come up and want you to feed them but they're not tame enough that they want to stay around or come in or anything so
you know those are just Big Cat and Little Cat
yeah well we had uh i lived on a farm when i was growing up and when we bought the farm there was uh couple of farm cats on the property
and they were sort of tame every now and then they'd let you pet them
but uh one of the cats which we named Bug Eyes she had a litter of kittens and she kept t hem away from the uh the house until they were pretty good size kittens
and they wouldn't let you get anywhere near them
and one day i went over to i found them sleeping and i went over and picked one of them up and it boy it was like picking up a buzz saw
huh
i bet it was that they do that you know they they have kittens out there in the garage or out in the barn
and the first time you try to get around the kittens you know it's you'd have to catch them with a
uh a fish net or something because they scamper away so quick
yeah
but i tried again a few weeks later but this time i put on some leather gloves
and my father still wondered what happened to those leather gloves
did you in
well it's been nice talking to you
well it's been very nice talking to you i appreciate having the call
and uh maybe we'll speak again on this little test that they're trying to do
all right
okay thank you bye-bye
bye
