When I was a child I had a lot of pets, dogs, cats, birds and fish. But I had a couple of unusual pets too. One of my pets was a rooster. I didn't hold him, but he was my rooster. It made me sad when my pet rooster turned ferocious and started chasing me when I tried to go into the chicken pen.

When I lived with my sister and brother-in-law in Iowa I made pets out of the barn cats. I thought one cat was a little skinny, he obviously didn't get enough to eat so I sneaked some cream out to him. Unfortunately my brother-in-law caught me. He let me know real fast that you don't feed cats cream. That definitely was the wrong thing to do.

"Cats have to catch mice," he told me in a rather loud voice. "Cream is expensive. If you spoil barn cats they don't go near the barn."

"Well, the poor thing was hungry." I excused myself.

"Let him eat mice," my heartless brother-in-law muttered.

Along with the barn cats I adopted a sweet, little fuzzy lamb. I called him Lambie Pie. He followed me back to the woods, around the yard and nuzzled my hand just like a puppy. He wanted to go into the house, but he had never been house broken so my uncaring sister wouldn't let him in. He had plenty to eat and he grew bigger and bigger. Soon he wasn't a little fuzzy lamb anymore, but I still loved him. Unfortunately Lambie Pie got old and just a bit mean. He turned to a life of crime and one day he committed the ultimate offense -- he butted my three-year-old nephew and knocked him down. Poor Lambie Pie was sentenced to the big house.

So having unusual pets ran in the family and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when my youngest daughter Lois decided that dogs and cats were good pets but she wanted something more unusual. First she brought home two white mice in a cage. I have never been fond of mice, but Lois tried to convince me that white mice were different, they had personality and were beautiful (she said). I didn't believe her. I threatened to open the cage and let the cat have a mouse picnic. I was in shock when she came home from school one day and discovered her mice were missing. She found them; they had gone to mouse heaven.

"I didn't do it," I swore. "Honest." I'm not sure she believed me but I did feel bad because I had threatened to open the cage and let the cat chew on them.

One day during spring vacation when Lois was ten years old she started acting weird. She went into her bedroom and shut the door behind her. I really got suspicious when she started coming out and getting bowls of water.

"What have you got in your room?" I asked.

"Nothing." She was innocent.

"You've got something," I insisted. "I'm coming back and find out what it is." It was only a threat, I really didn't want to go into her bedroom and inspect the situation. I was a little afraid of what I might find.

In a few minutes Lois came out with something in her hands. I was at the kitchen sink when she stuck that something in my face. I screamed. That something was small, long and scaly.

"What is it?" I hollered.

"It's only a Salamander," she explained. "Isn't it cute?"

"If you want it to live you better get it out of my face," I said as I backed off. "Where'd you get that thing?"

"Well, it's from school," she explained. "No one else would take it home, so I did."

"You what?" I bellowed.

"Well, someone had to take it home during spring vacation," she said. "No one else offered so I told the teacher I'd take it."

I never did think the Salamander was cute. I just couldn't get attached to that small, scaly creature. It wasn't near as cute as Lambie Pie. I was glad when school started.

I wondered if I was paying for feeding that barn cat the cream. My brother-in-law would have loved it.