Margotlog: Sponsoring Critters for the Holidays

Margotlog: Sponsoring Critters for the Holidays

I wasn't a farm girl at all except for the yearly trek with my mother and sister on old-fashioned trains - "clickety clack, I'm taking you back." In my case, this meant going north from Charleston, South Carolina, where my father took a job teaching history at The Citadel, and changing trains at least twice before the "local" landed us in her hometown, Hankinson, North Dakota.

Desite my father's soft skin and uncalloused hands, he took to wearing a Citadel uniform as if it was his native garb. Oddly, it helped that he had all the anxiety of a first-generation, born-in-this-country immigrant, yet with the flair of a dandy. Until he was older and developed a "paunch," he cut quite a figure in his uniform.

There are photos of him as a young man, before the Citadel, when he was getting a master's degree
at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh. One of my mother's few stories about their meeting described him leaning across her library desk--she was fledgling librarian. He was so insistent, with his brown eyes and head of dark hair, his musical voice, and soft hands--well, she succumbed, and went out with him.

Some quirk of fate not only married them but moved them from Pittsburgh to Charleston, South Carolina, where my father found a job teaching history. In my dim memory, we were the only Italians for miles around, except for Leroy LaTorre, my father's dear friend. They met, not at The Citadel, but in a Masonic Lodge.

There were also occasional Citadel cadelts whom he invited to dinner. He had learned from his mother and her sister, Aunt Josephine (adorable, short, cute little laughing woman) how to make delicious spaghetti. My mother never made noodles from dough, but it didn't take her long to master what was a very simple recipe: thin noodles, a tomato sauce composed of fried onions, one large can of whole tomatoes, a few small cans of tomato paste, and then the spices and some sugar. My father made sure the grated cheese was first quality, bought from one of the few Italian delicatesins in Charleston.

What does any of this have to do with critters? Well, my father insisted that we have a dog. No home was complete without one. We started with a rather tall, stiff-eared hound named, of course, "ROVER." Somehow this sequed to the little Easter chicks my sister and I acquired at Easter. Their soft feathers were tinted pink, blue, green. Eventually, when they started to crow, we gave them to the family next door. Of course, Rover got a bone for every holiday, wrapped in butcher's paper and eaten--certainly not under the dining room table, but OUTSIDE in the back yard.

Though my sister and I got a kick out of Rover, it was the little Easter chicks that taught me the most about animals. Within a month to six weeks, they had lost all their adorable pink/blue/green fluff and acquired regular feathers. Did any of them hang out with us until they crowed? '

No, I rather think we made a pact with our neighbors behind us whose large lot contained chicken coops. It was a rather sad family, if I remember correctly: a grandfather, a mother who worked somewhere in Charleston and unlike my father who drove the family car every morning in a mad dash across the roller-coaster Cooper River Bridge to the Citadel, she took the bus to wherever she worked.

Needless to say, she was gone workdays from early to what seemed to us, quite late, since our father sometines had only morning classes and would appear at home in mid-afternoon where he retreated to his study to correct papers.

Now, in Saint Paul, my husband Fran and I have a cat. No one anywhere near keeps chickens. It's probably outlawed in the city of St. Paul. But neighbors nearby have dogs, and now with Thanksgiving approaching, I am confident that almost every family will sit down to a Thanksgiving meal. To help others less fortunate, I give money at this time of year to Heifer International.

This year, I'm sponsoring one share of 3 Schools of Fish, one share of an Alpaca in honor of my friend Jo in FLorida who takes me to see an alpaca farm when I visit. One share of a goat, in honor of goats at my North Dakota grandfather's farms that used to nibble at us. One share of tree seedlings: One of my few contributions to global warming are the trees I've planted in our postage-stamp yard. They are huge after our many years of living here. I'm also including one share of rabbits, one basket of honeybees, one flock of chicks, and some ducks and geese.

It makes me happy to help others who will benefit from these animals. We have so much to be thanksful for.