I Used to be an Animal Lover

By D.A. Cairns

Why do some people love animals so much? Why don't some people love animals as much as you? Have you had both good and bad experiences with animals? Can you imagine a world without them?

 

Don't be fooled by the title. I Used to be an Animal Lover boldly goes where no book on animals has ever gone. From the bottom of the ocean to outer space, and deep into the human psyche, D.A.Cairns explains exactly why animals can be both our best friends and our worst enemies.

• Memoir
• Humour
• Homespun philosophy
• Mind blowing facts
• Welfare issues

With a terrific collection of animal quotes and idioms, D.A.Cairns uses humour, imagination and personal experience to show you the very best of the animal kingdom. Will you ever look at animals the same way again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: D.A.Cairns
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201136000

D.A. Cairns

Heavy metal lover and cricket tragic, D.A. Cairns lives on the south coast of News South Wales. He works as a freelance writer, has had over 100 short stories published, and has authored seven novels, and a superficial and unscientific memoir, I Used to be an Animal Lover. His latest book is the I Used to be an Animal Lover anthology.

Book preview

Part 1

The Boy

Chapter 1 

Faster than a Frill-necked Lizard

‘I always had an affinity for lizards. I’ve always felt somewhat close to them. They’re reptiles. I find myself feeling somewhat reptilian at times.’     - Johnny Depp

In 1969, when I was a little younger than I am today, Mum, Dad and I moved into a new house in Condell Park, a sub suburb of Bankstown in western Sydney. Adjacent to our new red brick home, on the other side of the grey paling fence, was a vast expanse of bushland which I knew nothing about for many years. We had neighbours on the other side and at the rear of our property, but I didn’t know they existed either. It was basically me and Mum, then a couple of years later my sister joined us. Dad was around, but not much. I could say because of his infrequent appearances at home, except to eat and sleep, that I don’t remember anything about him, but I could say the same about Mum and she was with me twenty-four seven.

Like all new suburbs birthed on the outskirts of burgeoning cities, Condell Park was filled with young aspirational first home buyers, with young children and babies. It was full of good people and bad people, nice homes of varying sizes and worn-out shacks inhabited by worn out people. Mostly hard-working dads with a few mums forced into the labour force to help pay the mortgage: the price of the Australian dream. It’s normal now for both husband and wife to work, but it wasn’t back in the late 60s and early 70’s when I grew up. The rat race had not yet begun in earnest.

There were no personal computers, mobile phones or even video games. The television was the mainstay of our indoor entertainment diet. Beatles, Rolling Stones, the birth of the Hippie movement, and the awful Vietnam War, but I don’t remember any of it. My memories of growing up in Condell Park are sketchy and patchy, random snippets. Next to our home, in the park which had eventually usurped the natural bush, there were some great ‘backyard’ cricket matches played. Local kids playing together. The group of children who were the offspring of Yugoslavian migrants pretending to be the West Indies cricket team, while the rest of us non-wog kids were the Aussies. The east European wannabe West Indians had their fair share of wins in those epic matches, but they never did get those Caribbean accents right.

We had awesome and massive bonfires on cracker night in the park too. My friends and I rode our bikes everywhere around Condell Park but preferred the bush surrounding the industrial zone. I had a Motocross bike, the first of the push bikes to come out with suspension. It was red. So special. Without technology to entertain us, we simply played outside so long as there was sunshine. Weekends and after school, just hanging out. I suppose we may have got into some trouble, but I don’t remember anything serious. I remember my friends. I remember the layout of the house. I remember when we got a flush toilet and how I kept using the old pit dunny until it was removed.

There are a bunch of memory fragments. Staying at a friend’s house and learning his parents made them turn off the tap while they brushed their teeth. We let it run until we were done. Being chased home from school by some bullies. Being at a mate’s house and laughing uncontrollably at the word ‘drizzle’ while watching from within his garage as said precipitation fell outside. He’d never heard the word before. Stone and rock throwing battles. Dad shouting at Mum for serving him cooked pineapple. Dad shouting at me and reefing me out of my seat because I wouldn’t eat my dinner, and I was a smart-arse apparently. Watching Little House on the Prairie every week as a family, and laughing together when Dad announced the Dingles were coming on TV. Mum always working, cooking, washing, loving, caring. Mum threatening me with the fly swatter when I pushed the envelope a little far. Dad coming home from work one night with a toupee which caused my sister and I to laugh hysterically. A dream I had about a demonic dog attacking me in my sleep. The night I’m sure I caught Santa at the end of my bed. The time I ripped open my toe on our steep front driveway. Mum taking us shopping and me coming home with my first pet.

At last, says the exasperated reader. I thought this book was about animals, not a memoir. It is both.

We had a family pet, a rust-coloured Kelpie cross called Cindy who could jump fences like you wouldn’t believe. Dad kept extending the height of the fences, but she kept escaping over the top and off she’d go to chase cars and get romantic with the neighbourhood studs. None of us remember exactly where Cindy came from; perhaps she was immortal. When I mentioned my first pet, I’m talking about mice. I bet I’ve owned more mice over the years than anyone who reads this book. Mice are easy, not as easy as fish, but good pets for children to cut their teeth on. Parental permission for pets is always accompanied by generally unheeded lectures about responsibility. Mums and dads usually have to pick up the slack, but I reckon I did okay. Mice are low cost, space saving and fun pets.

When Cindy had pups, we kept the deranged one but regretted doing so every day until we re homed him. Snapper was his name and his nature. That crazy pup couldn’t stop biting everything and everyone within reach of its itchy jaws. We might have had a cat or two by that stage as well. There was an aviary in the backyard, and we probably had fish.  I don’t know if I loved animals, or just accepted them and enjoyed them because they were there. One of the cats might have joined our family because of my pathetic pleading at a pet shop window at Bankstown Square, and I certainly wanted mice, but the other household beasts were just there. My sister reckons Dad brought most of them home. He had a thing for strays, and as a travelling salesman he was frequently offered puppies and kittens to take home. I don’t think Mum ever liked the influx of furred or feathered freeloaders, but we were never over run so I guess Dad had enough sense to show some restraint.

I have no idea when this happened, but the animals that really grabbed me, the ones I genuinely loved and was fanatical about were lizards. It would have started with common garden skinks and the necessity for me, like most children, especially boys, to catch them. They’d lay their ectothermic bodies out in the sun, lounging on rocks and paths, warming themselves from above and below, not moving, perhaps sleeping. Are they asleep? I’d wonder, as I crept closer. Look how shiny and smooth they are. How fast can they run on those tiny legs? I want to touch it. I must touch it. Close enough to strike, I’d try to pin them with my fingers, with just enough force to capture them, not hurt them. The sensation of them wriggling to try to escape. The second attempt to pin them, but only grabbing the tail. A surge of energy, more violent thrashing before the lizard was gone. Damn they’re fast. Then realizing the tail was still wriggling under my thumb and forefinger. Shock. This ability to drop the tail as a defense method is called caudal autonomy. I later learned they regenerate their tails, but the replacements are never as good as the original. The chasing and catching of garden skinks became a sport, and I could lose myself for hours in the thrill and fascination. Cindy loved it too, and she was a way better hunter than me.

Sometimes, I kept the lizards I caught - either in jars, ice cream tubs or Mum’s Tupperware containers. Sometimes I was told to let them go, and I always did, though not necessarily when I was told to. I never wanted to hurt them, let alone kill them. I loved them. I started reading books about them and simultaneously discovered there were even more impressive members of this reptile suborder, Lacertilia.

Also common in suburban backyards of eastern Australia, though not as ubiquitous as garden skinks, are another member of the Scincidae family: the eastern Blue-tongue lizard. Shiny and small legged like their smaller cousins, but slower, with broader heads and shorter tails and wow! Blue tongues. How cool! The Blueys were much more of a challenge for the budding collector. What they lacked in speed, they made up for with aggression. If you bothered them, they made no effort to hide their anger, opening their mouths wide and hissing. I also found out the first time I pinned one, that those jaws had some power. It didn’t tickle, let me tell you. I had to learn a better technique to avoid the bite and secure the prize. I practiced the method on the garden skinks, which I’d learned after my first encounter with the shake off the tail trick. The key was to use your thumb to pin them behind the head, locking the front feet behind your fingers, and eventually maneuvering your hand underneath the chest-I know lizards don’t have chests, but you know what I mean. Speed was the only other necessary ingredient with the little fellas, but with the Blue Tongue you also needed courage.

Believe it or not, I forget the first time I captured a Bluetongue, but I know I got good at it, and I caught many. Again, I usually let them go immediately or following a very short incarceration during which they were spoiled with fresh fruit and snails. Admittedly, they’d been helping themselves to the same snails in the garden, but I was making it easy for them. Okay, I know there’s nothing difficult about catching and eating a snail. I did it too, whenever I felt hungry and lazy.

I thought the aggressive gaping of the Blue Tongue was impressive until I encountered some of the Agamidae family: the dragons. No smooth and shiny skin for these lizards, and no fire breathing or flying either, by the way. Two very common species in our neighbourhood were the Bearded Dragon and the Frill-necked Lizard. The Bearded Dragon, so named for the beard like rough flap of skin around its lower jaw, also gapes to scare off potential threats, but it adds the neat trick of pushing out its beard, almost like inflating it with a puff of air. The air in fact is sucked in via a sharp inhale which balloons the body with the overall effect of making the dragon look larger than it really is. Works pretty well on most natural predators and also on unnatural ones like suburban canines and felines. Never worked on me though. By this tame I considered myself a virtual master of lizards, so I was hardly going to be put off by hostile posturing from a creature smaller than my leg. I definitely admired the attempt to frighten me off though and remained wary of a bite, which although not likely to do anything other than scratch my skin, was still something to be studiously avoided.

Bearded Dragons have three advantages over Blue Tongues. Firstly, speed. Secondly, arboreal aptitude; they climb trees really well, and finally, camouflage. Although not in the chameleon’s league, the Bearded Dragon, can scramble up a tree in the blink of an eye and virtually disappear. Its natural skin colouring is like the bark of the trees which it scales, not to mention the same texture. As a result, they were harder to catch, if not necessarily harder to find. Nevertheless, I honed my hunting skills and caught a few of these pogona barbatas. Two of those lucky captives even had the privilege of living in our backyard aviary for a while. I named them Fonzie and Pinkie, on the assumption they were a couple, though of course I had no idea.

Best of all, and I only ever caught one of these fellas, is the Frill-necked Lizard. Although not Australia’s largest agamid, chlamydosaurus kingii, (note the dinosaur in the name), is perhaps our most famous and definitely one of the coolest dragons Down Under. The only lizard to ever feature on Australian coins or bank notes. I was impressed by the Bearded Dragons puffing and bloating, but literally blown away by the Frilly. It should have been called the Umbrella Head Dragon, except for the fact that it sounds dumb. Reaching up to 90cm in length, with a 60 cm tail, these dragons are fast. Seriously fast. If you’ve seen one of these puppies run, it’s hilarious and terrifying at the same time. Up to twenty-five kilometres per hour on their hind legs. Picture it! Can’t picture it? You have my permission to take a break from this book and check out chlamydosaurus kingii on YouTube.

Reluctantly I’m going to close this chapter, but fear not lizard lovers, I’ll have more to say to later.

Chapter 2

A Dog in a Box

‘No one can fully understand the meaning of love unless he’s owned a dog. A dog can show you more honest affection with a flick of his tail than a man can gather through a lifetime of handshakes.’ - Gene Hill

Maybe this is a myth, or pure fantasy, or perhaps a shadow of truth with a hot streak of poetic license. This is the story of how an abandoned Kelpie Cross became Cindy Cairns, canine queen of Condell Park. My sister disputes it, and Mum doesn’t remember. If Dad was still around, maybe he could give us the truth, or at least his version of it. He wasn’t averse to bit of embellishment on his favourite stories. I may have got my bibliophilia from Mum, but my propensity to exaggerate, especially for comedic effect, was definitely inherited from Dad.

A Dog in a Box

Al’s customers drove him mad, drove him to the edge and right around the bend. It was a bloody hard slog working for commission only, but Al was up for it because he had the three most vital qualities needed to be a successful salesman: determination, charm, and the gift of the gab. Al was a smooth talker who loved a chat. The thrill of the chase also appealed. Although the pressure forced him to drink too much and often kept him away from home and his young family, it gave him a buzz: to win a sale. He may have been a husband and a father, a working man supporting a family; a dude with a fashionable haircut, killer sideburns, and an even deadlier smile, but Al was still a boy at heart. He was competitive and fun loving, and although he knew he had taken on adulthood and its weighty responsibilities before he was ready, he would be damned if he was going to let anyone down.

And so it was, that on one sunny winter’s day around noon, when Al had finished a call and hopefully nailed the sale, his stomach grumbled, cried out for a pie and a crème bun. He always liked to eat outdoors in the fresh air, with the gentle brushstrokes of sunshine on his face. Al travelled extensively around Sydney and had a swag of favoured bakeries. On this occasion he was in Bankstown, not far from home, where he parked the company car in front of the bakery, bought his lunch and walked across the road into a tree filled park. Choosing a sun-soaked bench and ignoring the overflowing rubbish bin close by, he sat to eat. Munching away contentedly, Al fancied he heard a scuffling noise coming from a box positioned against the base of the metal garbage bin.

Mulling over the potential sale and calculating his commission, he dismissed the sounds and bit into the pie. Al winced as the steamy beef ghoulash within the pastry squirted onto the roof of his mouth. He quickly sucked in some air to cool the fire inside. Ah, the joy of the meat pie, he thought. It was always a challenge to swallow as much of the pie as possible without losing too much of the pastry to careless gluttony. Much of the pastry, flaked off and cavorted to the ground anyway. Some stuck to his lips.

Al heard the noise again, stared at the box, and saw it move. A whimper joined the almost inaudible tune of soft clawing against carboard. The two sounds unifying to call for attention.

It seemed an incredible thing, an impossible thing. Yet, Al knew what to do. He carefully placed his pie on the bench beside him, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood slowly. In two steps he reached the box, and knelt before it, reaching for the fourfold lid which had been taped shut. After peeling the tape off, he unfolded the cardboard arms and beheld the source of the pitiful noise. The boy inside Al fell in love with the rust-coloured puppy immediately. He guessed it was only eight to ten weeks old, barely weaned. With the lid open, the puppy looked up, momentarily losing its voice and ability to move, but only for an instant. Their eyes met and the abandoned puppy had found a new home. Al lifted it out of the box, sat back down, and placed it on his lap, making sure it was comfortable and not about to fall off, before returning his attention to the pie.

The puppy slept, content and safe, while Al finished his pie then demolished the crème bun. He washed it down with a swig of chocolate milk, lightly stroking the puppy as it slept peacefully. As he drank, the man inside Al became angry, thinking about the bastard who had dumped this poor little creature. Heartless. If he met the bloke who did it-he assumed it was a man, no not a man, a male human-he would clock him unconscious then stuff him in a box and dump him in a park. It was easy to talk tough when you only had yourself as an audience. Al wondered what he’d really do. Certainly, at the very least he’d give him a good telling off. Once the last of the chocolate milk landed in his stomach, Al wiped his mouth again and carefully lifted the pup in his left hand, cradling it against his chest while he gathered his rubbish and dropped it in the very box out of which he had lifted his new best mate.

He had another call to make before he could present the puppy to his children who he knew would be ecstatic. Less so his wife, although she would be unable to resist the tide of emotion pressing for the puppy to be allowed to stay with them. He was the master of the house after all. He paid all the bills, put food on the table, provided whatever his family needed - at least by his reckoning - so if he wanted the dog to stay, it would stay. He smiled broadly as he returned to his car. After laying the pup on the passenger seat, Al settled behind the wheel and gazed gratefully at the storefront of the bakery.

Cindy’s Hot Bread

Al looked lovingly at the cute little pup as it snuffled and shuffled its way around the seat to find the most comfortable spot on which to nap.

‘Alright Cindy,’ he said out loud, though the cute little canine was unmoved by hearing what was now its name. ‘One more call and we can go home. How about that?’

It was something like that, or maybe nothing like that, but in any case, Dad brought Cindy home and we did fall in love: just as Dad had. Love at first sight.

What do I remember about Cindy? She jumped a lot. Dogs can be quite bouncy, and most of them like to jump especially when they’re excited. For people who aren’t terribly comfortable with dogs, and even for those who are, the leaping greeting can be annoying at best, and intimidating at worst. Cindy never received any training. She was uncouth. Never allowed indoors and never exposed to discipline, but she was friendly, and as I recall, only caused troubles for us in two ways. Firstly, the jumping thing. As she had a decent sized backyard to run around in, Cindy was never taken for walks. I don’t think we even bought a lead for her, though she did have a collar. As a result of being stuck in the yard all the time, she spent a lot of time getting unstuck. By jumping. The good old grey paling fence was like a warm-up for this Olympic class vaulter. Once Cindy grew up and developed some muscle coordination, which didn’t take long, she put those powerful rear legs to use, by flying over that fence as though it wasn’t there.

Dad extended the fence upwards, but that proved only mildly challenging for this canine athlete. Cindy spent a lot of time roaming the neighborhood, but always came home. Dogs, at least the smart ones, have an amazing homing beacon built into their DNA. The second problem we had with Cindy wouldn’t have been a problem except for the first.

Apart from food, Cindy had two passions; tummy rubs and chasing cars. The intense need to run after motor vehicles, barking at them wildly and nipping at the tyres, somehow only resulted in her suffering a broken leg twice The second time however, which happened after we moved to Caringbah, ended in her death. Not directly, but because of her age and the cost of the surgery, Mum and Dad decided our faithful mutt had reached her use by date. My sister and I were informed of the decision to euthanize Cindy before it happened, but it wasn’t discussed. I was sad, probably devastated. More than likely, I cried, but I moved on quickly, taking the incident as one of life’s hard lessons. When my paternal grandfather died some years later, I was old enough to appreciate the difference between the loss of a pet, and the loss of a person.

Most dogs love attention. If you start patting them, they will generally insist you don’t stop. Some like gentle stroking. Some like scratching. Some like a good, firm thumping, while others, like Cindy, love a good tummy rub. If you tried to pat Cindy, she’d fall over, after she jumped all over you that is. She’d fall down, roll over, thrust her legs up and demand a massage. She rarely tired of this treatment. I’m picturing a photograph of me and Cindy in the backyard at Condell Park. I’m shirtless, so it could have been summer, or I could have been a skinny tough guy who liked showing off my ribs. Perhaps I was too lazy to put a shirt on. Anyway, Cindy’s on her back with her legs splayed and her tongue lolling from the side of her mouth. There’s a hint of a smile: she could be laughing.

On one of her many expeditions on the other side of the fence, Cindy must have met a beau, because she fell pregnant, and we ended up with a litter of puppies who were born under the house. There were eight, plus two stillborn, and although I was too young to understand it, I had been presented with a lesson about life and death. If indeed I loved Cindy, now I had to find more love for her offspring, but it wasn’t difficult. The first thing I did every morning, and as soon as I got home from school, was to check on those puppies. From blind, helpless creatures with all the muscle control of a sack of rice, they thrived on a steady diet of Cindy’s milk. It was fascinating to watch. The cuteness factor was off the charts. Eventually, when they opened their eyes and started to make forays outside the nest, Cindy often needed to retrieve them. I thought it was so cool, how she picked them up by the scruff of their necks, holding them in her mouth with just the right amount of pressure, carrying them back to safety. The more they grew, they more they moved and the more frequent were Cindy’s trips backward and forward. Then they started playing with each other, biting and