For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in all sorts of wildlife – well, not creepy-crawlie types, heck no, but birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles in the main.

In the late Sixties, my pals and I would catch brown rats and mice from the railway embankment at the back of my house. ‘Rescuing them,’ we’d say. ‘Rescuing them’ from what, I’m not entirely sure, but that’s just the way the mind of a ten-year-old boy works, I guess. We’d then release them at the local farm just up the road … where they’d probably by killed and eaten by the host of feral farm cats.

I’d also collect frog spawn from the little burn that ran by the area known locally as ‘The Dump’ where I played football. I’d keep the spawn in a large basin of water, to which I’d add some pondweed and rocks. I wanted to give it a ‘homely’ feel, you understand.

After a few weeks, the water would begin to smell, and the stench would permeate the ramshackle porch, filtering through to the kitchen should the door be left open. It stank real bad, but I couldn’t disturb the developing tadpoles to clean it out. Credit my parents for their understanding – it takes about three weeks for a tadpole to hatch, and another fourteen or so for it to grow into a frog … slightly longer for a toad.

They weren’t quite so patient though when the little frogs found some strength in their legs and started hopping out of the basin and exploring their surroundings! At this point, I was instructed to pour the water, and frogs onto the grassy railway embankment at the bottom of the garden … where they would likely be killed and eaten by the brown rats mentioned above.

(That’s the Circle of Life, right there, dear reader.)

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in my fascination and appreciation of animals. Back in the late Sixties and through the Seventies, us kids were encouraged in our love of wildlife through clever TV programming.

In The Sixties, the umbrella show, ‘Watch With Mother’ featured the adventures of Roderick the Water Rat and Hammy the Hamster in ‘Tales of the Riverbank.’ It proved so popular another series was commissioned in the early 1970s, this time in colour and with Johnny Morris doing his famous animal voice-overs.

And of course, speaking of dear old Johnny, there was this:

Other ‘real life’ shows featuring animals and targeting the Children’s TV schedule were: Champion The Wonderhorse; The White Horses (no – I think I’ve attached this theme tune way too many times already in previous articles); Lassie; Flipper, and one for our antipodean contributor, John Allan …. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

Now come on – who didn’t have a smile on their face watching that last one?

Our favourite cartoons were invariably animal: Tom & Jerry; Daffy Duck; Bugs Bunny; Foghorn Leghorn; Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner; Huckleberry Hound; Scooby-Doo; Top Cat  ….

Even the few cartoons that featured humans in the main character role, generally had a pet or two that contributed to the humour: The Flintstones (Dino) ; The Jetsons (Astro); Dastardly & Muttley, all spring to mind.

Then of course, there was the television programme all parents loved and loathed in equal measure – Blue Peter. Loved for its educational influence; loathed for encouraging us kids to set fire to the Christmas table with home-made, flammable decorations … and for prompting that most feared of pleas:

“Mum? Dad? Can we get a puppy? Pleeeease?”

I know my sister and I endlessly pestered our folks for a dog. My dad had one as a child, so knew the commitment that came with it. He flatly refused on the basis that he’d be the poor mug having to do late evening / early morning walks and clear the mess from his neatly mown lawn and flower beds.

Eventually, after many months of tantrums and tears (at the time, I thought that an odd reaction from ‘grown-ups!’) they relented. We could have a pet. In fact, we could have two – one each.

Goldfish. Bloody goldfish!

Whoop-de-woo!

Still, it showed our parents were weakening. My sister and I had something to work on. ‘Fish’ and ‘Chips’ we called the goldfish. They didn’t make the most exciting of pets, I have to say. But we made do, watching them swim round and round and round, while we mimicked their gaping mouth action.

Minutes and minutes of endless fun.

Some years, and several goldfish later, our parents softened their stance on family pets, and we became custodians of a lovely green and yellow budgerigar. Dinkie was his name. He boasted five throat spots, which meant he’d be a great talker. (Actually, that was total bo*****s – but he was a great talker and so we perpetuated that myth out of convenience.)

Dinkie lived well into budgie old-age and continued to play ‘bullfights’ on the dining table, running at sheets of tissue paper which my sister and I would brandish like a matador’s muleta.

Around the mid to late Seventies, we did eventually get a dog. I still have no idea why my parents caved in – I was well into my teens by this time, way past the notion of pet responsibility and more interested in girls, beer and football.

It didn’t end well. It didn’t even start well! Leaving a four-month-old golden Labrador puppy alone for a day, while the family is out at work / school, was only ever going to result in one three things: ripped curtains on the floor; carpet ripped into four pieces, north to south and east to west; soaked and soiled bare floorboards!

Poor (not so) Lucky. We did find her a good home on a farm within a few days.

Mac and Lachie (wee West Highland Terriers) were considered a better option once we’d put the house back together again. Named after Scottish athletes of the time, Lachie Stewart and Ian Mc Cafferty, they were beautiful, good-natured dogs … but insanely jealous and would tear lumps of fur out of each other from time to time. Well, quite frequently, actually. It always seemed to me who had to wade in and part them, often at the cost of some heavy collateral damage.

At the same time, I also had a mouse! Not a soppy little white one, but a proper brown mouse like the ones I used to catch some years earlier. I got him from a rather run-down looking pet shop in Glasgow city centre. The owner tried to fob me off with one from his window display but when I said I wanted a brown / black one, he disappeared into the back shop. I heard a bit of a commotion, things being dropped and clattered, before the owner returned several minutes later with what I’d asked for. I didn’t ask any more questions.

Little Scruff wasn’t allowed into the house and had to be kept in the garden hut … where his food attracted other mice, and I’d regularly have to clear away evidence of an illicit ‘mouse party’ before my folks got wind of it.

Since moving out and marrying in the early Eighties, our Diane and I have kept cats: Kizzy lived to the age of eighteen; Pacco and Rabanne till nineteen, and our present two rescued feral cats, Lulu and Suki, have just turned three years old.

And for over sixteen years now, I’ve run my own Petcare / Dog Walking business.

Yes – children’s TV from the late ‘60s and 1970s has left quite a legacy.

Thank goodness though, the programme makers decided to anthropomorphise all those sweet little animals and not accountants or light-bulb salesmen.

I shudder to think how my life could have looked.

_____

OK, OK. I hear you …. Here’s the Flipper theme to save you searching You Tube! 😀