Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1876 — The Latest Thing in Pets. [ARTICLE]

The Latest Thing in Pets.

One of the oddest pets that ever existed belongs tc a little girl in Seventy-first street. A visitor met her at the gate last summer with what she supposed was a lunch-box under her arm. To the lady’s surprise a snake-like head ran out a little way from the lunch-box, and the pet turned out to be a common mud turtle. Some od6 had brought the creature home a year or so before, and let it loose in the garden. When the children began to' play there, out from its hole came the turtle, and singling out this child, gave evidence of intelligence beyond belief. The turtle was called Pedro, < and the little girl had but to call that name two or three times at the back door to see the old box waddling up from the bottom of the garden—directly. Any oneelse approaching or attempting familiarities, the clumsy feet were drawn promptly in, and the wise old head retired within its shell, and no sign of life would Pedro give. But let the child take it, the claws closed round one of her fingers, and the head, run out to its fullest extent of neck, would be waggled against her with every token of love a turtle could give. There came a time during the summer when the little mistress was sick. The mother sitting in the dusk thought she saw a dark object moving in the room, and shortly after, hearing a pumping on the stairs, went out aud found it wus Pedro returning to his hole in the yard. Bach day for weeks, with the opening of the outside door, in would w T alk Pedro. The girl generally found him waiting on the steps. He would go to the stairs, stand upright in a corner, and setting his little feet info the stairs above, pull himself up. This operation he would repeat till ho reached the landing. If the door into the sick child’s room was closed, he waited patiently to be allowed to enter. When taken up aud laid beside its mistress it made no effort to move, but lay for hours, wffft its solemn head wagging from side to side. -A.t night it waddled off to the stairs, and then the racket commenced, as it fell off each step In a clumsy fashion, sounding like that famous clock in the Ingoldsby legends that went hopping after Mr. Ap. Jones. — Mrs. M. G. Fisher, in Arcadian.