Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 57, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1917 — Her Ideal Pet [ARTICLE]

Her Ideal Pet

Pets are emotional necessities. Observe the number of fox terriers sequestered in small apartments. There is no common, easily comprehended joy in the close companionship of an uneasy fox terrier. It~ has been said of the breed that a devoted master or mistress can sit up ail night training a specimen, and in the morning it .will find something outrageous and 'totally new with which to demoralize its environment. Yet folk in small fiats and folk in studios, they of the “tribe of the folding Bedouin," do harbor fox terriers, it must be.that they answer Borne occult need of the soul, they and the loud-voiced felines, the monkeys and the parrots that one finds domiciled in unlikely and inconvenient spots about town. Mankind is gregarious, even to the point of flocking with fUr, fins and feathers when matter more attractive cannot be acquired in sufficient numbers to fill up all the space. Jane Conners iS alone in the'family apartment for six weeks this summer. Jane Conners felt that need of the. soul which calls for the ’companionskip of something and decided to adopt a pet.. Now us a cursory view the best of all pets for a busy woman appeared to be a turtle. A turtle, so every one told Jane, has a distinct personality of its own, yet never forces it upon one. A turtle eats at ibe most obliging intervals or not, as suits one’s and very little, of anything that happens to be at 'hand. A turtle is as quiet as a domesticated sphynx and of so retiring a disposition that a chance motion in his direction will send him into Bis Fkell for hours on end. Jane Connors decided to have a turtle. No sooner had she reached the decision than, as luck would have it, .Tim Sykes stopped by to take her motoring, and in a wooded spot up on Jerome avenue they spied a turtle diligently crossing the road, and ran right over him. Jane hopped oat of the car in no time and, finding the creature uninjured and hissing in a lively fashion, at onoe secured him, brought, him home to the apartment and christened him the District Attorney.

It was very late when she reached home and very hot. Jane could not just find a proper pan for the District Attorney, so she wrung out a towel in cold water and put it on the floor in the sitting room by the open window. The District Attorney was a mud turtle, and the towel seemed as good as a bank of mud tor him to wallow In. Now Jane Was alone in the apartment and she left a light, the talJ standing lamp turned very low to scare burglars, and she went to bed with her door open to let a breeze through. In the middle of the night she awoke. In the sitting room sounded the most blood curdling bumping back and forth. She leaned out of bed and swung the door wide open, and her Heart turned over and Jumped up into her mouth. Along the floor, wriggling to and fro and bumping like mad, flopped and squirmed a long snake-like white something. To and fro, up and down it turned and twisted and presently made for (be open door Into the bedroom. As it came toward her jane remembered with a sick despair that the matches, were on the sideboard in the dining rooip. That long squirming white thing was now bump"Tfr;r~Hnti~ wriggling -directly beside Ihe Head of the bed; Jane thought* of screaming for help but the people in the next apartment are awful gossips t and Jane is unemotional and the screams wouldn't come. Pretty soon Jane remembered that her ancestors were Puritans, and the descended part of her took her in hand and Baid to her, “Jane Connors get up this second and get those matches.” Jane got up. The thing wriggled after her, now silent on the rugs, now bumping hard on the hardwood floors, but chasing along beeid her almost as fast as she. When they got directly opposite the tall standing lamp, the thing was between her and it She got up all her coulage and she jumped over it and pat mp a hand to turn up the light. But just at that moment her eyes fell on the thing, and it was making a violent squirm right for her. She sidestepped suddenly and the standing lamp went over with a crash, and there she was with the squirming creature very close to her in the pitch dark. She was pretty glad to hear the people from the next apartment knocking 'on the door and she was pretty-glad: to let them in, if they are awful gossips. When they managed to strike a light, of course there was the turtle with his front legs caught fast in the fringe of the towel, frightened to the point of panic, poor thing, and dragging it wildly about the floor. “And to think,” said Jane Connors. “To think i only adopted him because they said, be would never force his personality upon me. And to think how much it will cost to fix up the standing lamp again. But mankind la gregarious and the family should never have left me alone for six weeks this summer.” ;