My first pet was a parakeet. I had it while we lived in Delano on Jefferson Street, so I must have been about three or four years old. I cannot remember what I named it, but I remember that I had a blue parakeet and my brother, Phil, had a green parakeet.

The only things I remember about these birds is that they would fly out of the cage when you opened their little door. Then, they would fly around the house, and my mom would have to chase them down, catch them, and return them to their cages.

Once, when Phil’s green parakeet escaped it flew around the living room and straight out the door into the wild, blue yonder. Phil was so horrified that he ran out the door after it. But he was also coming straight from taking a bath, so he ran outside butt-naked after this bird. (He repeated this action once again when he heard the ice cream truck coming down the street. He had no inhibitions about running outside butt-naked. I hope this behavior does not repeat itself when he gets older.)

We had a dog when I was very young – really too young to remember it. We had to give it away because it snapped at us, or maybe we gave it away because it snapped at someone else… or maybe it just ran away. I don’t remember.

In Delano around the time I was in third grade, we kids got a dog, a mixed breed of cocker spaniel and something fluffy. We named him “Inkie” because he was black (I don’t know why we didn’t name it “Blackie.”) This marked the beginning of Phil and me cleaning up dog poop in the backyard.

When we moved to Potter Lane in Sacramento (long after Inkie died), Phil had to clean up the dog poop from Gretchen/Boogalatesk (a new dog) because he was in charge of the backyard. He called it “Feeding the spiders.” He would collect the poop and place it all under a neatly woven spider web he found in the backyard. Throughout the day, as flies flew in and out of the dog poop, they would get caught in the web and the spider would come down, stun them, wrap them up and save them for an evening meal. Later, when “Mad” magazine called dog poop “Glitch,” we called it “Cleaning up the Glitch.” Often, you would hear one of us say, “Ahhh! I stepped in Glitch!”

Then, for a short time on Fontaine Court in Sacramento, we got two chicks for Easter which, of course, grew into full-sized bantam chickens. Now, we had to clean up Glitch and chicken poop. They pooped everywhere. If anyone left the dryer door open, the chickens would nest on the warm clothes, poop all over them, and occasionally lay eggs in the dryer. We had to wash more clean clothes than anyone in Sacramento merely because the chickens had pooped on them in the dryer. I don’t know what eventually happened to the chickens. I think we gave them away to a farmer.

(Pictured: Me and Phil with the bantam hens around 1966. We do not look very happy about them. Behind us is our 1964 Chevrolet station wagon with the rear seat that faced backwards.)