Sam's story is quite short, but I feel it is a cute tale. One day my brother came home from bike riding, with a peacock. We lived in a corner house that was fenced in, had a pool and exotic fruit trees. He took Sam out back and called to my parents. They came out, and you should have seen the look on their faces. Mom asked "where in the world did that come from"? And believe it or not my brother who was 10 yr old at the time said those classic words, "it followed me home, can I keep it?" We all had a laugh at that one, so my folkes said he could keep it out back.
Now I don't know how many of you have ever seen a peacock with its tail feathers all spread out..its a beautiful sight to behold. (thats where tv chanel NBC got its symbol. But I am sure very few of you have ever heard a peacock calling out for its mate in the middle of the night. The sound it makes sounds just like a woman screaming thats been hurt terribly. We, and all our neighbors, found out that night. We were awakened about 2am by the sound of a woman screaming, it woke up the whole neighborhood, a peacocks voice can be heard for over 1/2 mile!!! Needless to say, Sam was taken out to the country where he belonged the next day.
Now, Miami is known for all its exotic animals, but who ever heard of keeping a LION cub in their backyard? Well, a friend of mine named Dale had a boyfriend that had a pet lion cub he had raised from 1 mth old. This was in 1966, and even back then in Miami...there were rules and reulations. The city found out that he had been keeping a lion cub in his apartment, and they were going to take it away and put it in the zoo. Nowadays the zoo's most people go to have large areas for the animals to wander, but back then a lion was keep in a small bared enclosure in the Florida heat, and it broke my heart to see them kept in this condition. So did Dale and her boyfriend.
So with the authorities closing in on him, Dale's boyfriend talked with her parents and they allowed Dale to "hide" the LION in the back yard. Now, this lion cub was 5 mths old and weighed over 100lbs, her back yard was not fenced so they kept the lion on a chain. She lived behind me...two doors over, so we allways spent a lot of time together. We would go out and "wrestle" with the lion cub, he never hurt us or got carried away, and we all loved the "little" lion cub.
Somehow the authorities found out about the where-a-bouts of the cub and were comming to get him. We were all crying and hugging the lion. It turned out well for the cub though, Lion Country Safari was just opening, it was a place where the animals ran free and the people were confined to their cars, at least it wasn't the zoo, and when ever we went to visit the park, he came right up to our cars and got a good petting..much to the amazement of the other visitors!!!
Just a little note to let you know that after Missy died, my folks got a poodle...she had 2 littrs and we kept one from each litter, so it was rarely a time I did not have a house pet.
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