LOL, thanks everyone!! I tried my best!
My mom has always been into animals, having grown up around her grandparents working farms, having dogs and the occasional rabbit growing up, and when she got married to my dad they had dogs, did meat rabbits briefly (my dad didn't have the heart to butcher them after the first batch), and goldfish. After my parents divorced, we had everything but cats (she's allergic) and rabbits and elephants.
We were quite poor growing up and so we didn't go on vacations, to amusement parks, or the like. She believed in having animals since we couldn't do those things, so we always had pets; mice, goldfish, an accidental litter of puppies, guppies, gerbils, turtles, guinea pigs (we raised them too), rats, parakeets, lizards, and dogs. If there was a stray, she took it in and posted notices til the owner was found or she found the dog a new owner. She took in some baby skunks whose mother had been killed by a car and for six months we had four skunk babies in the house, and then outside in a dog house with access to come and go once they were old enough. In the fall they disappeared into the woods but they came back the next spring for visits. Reintroduced skunks to our side of town too, LOL!!
My mother has enjoyed our rabbits since last year, so the little harli kit was the final straw for her animal-heartedness! She couldn't keep her eyes off the little beast when we visited that NZR rabbitry!!
I think my mom did a great thing with us and the animals when we were young, despite getting flack from people ("You're on welfare and you can afford dog food?" This was the early 80s, so bags were like $5). She encouraged me to try raising guinea pigs when I was 12 and taught me to have a PLAN for my gp business. She was kosher when I brought home the mice that were used in our high school behavior studies at the end of the year. She was fine with me bringing home a neglected parakeet from a person who had lost interest in it, and I took care of it until it passed. She has always been an animal advocate.
Of we four siblings, only one of us doesn't have animals--however, my oldest sister has a farm with horses, rabbits, chickens, ducks and is eyeballing a goat; my brother has had several dogs; my husband and I have had dogs and mice and now rabbits since we've been married. And we have Mom to thank for that!
