Strange Pets 



Cyrus B. I )eVry. 



Director of the Lincoln Park Zoological Garden, Chicago. 



In compliance with your request to contribute to your highly 

 interesting publication something concerning animals that are not 

 commonly adopted as pets, I will say that very few persons who 

 live in civilized communities, especially those born and reared in 

 flats, have any idea as to the variety of creatures that readily 

 become the companions of lonely men and women and the play- 

 mates of children. 



As the problems of the Self are now being investigated with 

 such widespread avidity, I will first call attention to that yet un- 

 named mystical attraction that, at first contact, establishes con- 

 fidence between certain members of the human family and ani- 

 mals ; among the latter many that are called wild, ferocious, — 

 hence dangerous. 



There are many instances of persons who have formed in- 

 timate companionship with creatures from whom the average 

 city dweller would flee at sight. Lions, tigers, leopards, — all the 

 various members of the great cat family, have been known as 

 pets. Bears, wolves, foxes, deer, raccoon, opposum, prairie dogs 

 and many other kinds of so-called "wild animals" have responded 

 gladly to that peculiar, undefined something contained in some 

 human beings that converts a creature, ordinarily regarded as an 

 enemy, into a cherished friend. 



AYhere children are born and raised in more or less isolated 

 localities, and are not constantly warned by nervous mothers 

 to "look out, it may bite you,'' it is not at all uncommon to find 

 pets made of creatures that would produce hysteria in young or 

 old brought up in the artificial environment" of so-called civiliza- 

 tion. 



Xot to go too deeply into lines of research that yet baffle 

 science, I will only say that fear is often a greater menace than 

 the apparent cause thereof. A person who is without fear incurs 

 far less risk than one who faces an animal boldly. In that regard 

 there is a similitude with disease ; the less you are afraid in that 

 ratio diminishes the danger of being attacked. 



The young of most animals have, some time and somewhere, 

 been made pets. Some remain docile and affectionate a long 

 time, others become less tractive on reaching their maturity and 

 less safe to handle as they grow old. Much depends on the 



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