By Hubert Schriebl
Like most families with children, we had house pets. We went to the shelter and picked out a cute cocker-mix puppy for our son’s birthday—“Murphy” after the storybook character Sergeant Murphy. Every day Murphy ran to the end of our lane, waited for the school bus, and he and my son walked home together. Our daughter was given a kitten by friends from New York City right after they had seen the show “The Wiz”—so Wiz was his name.
Time went on, however … Murphy passed away, and one day Wiz didn’t return home. Perhaps he became a part of the Great Outdoor Food Chain. When I read that millions of songbirds are killed each year by domestic cats, I decided not to have another cat, and we’re away from home too much to have a dog—so now we are pet-less.
Soon we realized that wild animals were coming closer to the house, and in a way were replacing our house pets. Apples under a tree attracted a family of deer as they passed by twice a day, and our now-famous porcupine got tipsy from gorging on fermented fallen fruit! We’ve observed a wide variety of animals right from our windows: bobcat, fisher cat, coyote, gray tree-climbing fox, moose, birds of prey, even grouse in their mating ritual. Birds at our feeder captivate us all winter. A “Fresh Air cat” who visits from the city when our daughter and son-in-law go away is an indoor cat so the birds are safe; this compromise has allowed us the best of both worlds, wild and domestic.
