Easter and Pet Month coincide. Sometimes it’s magic. Sometimes it’s not
We spent that Easter giving the chickens enemas. I can’t recommend it.
It was 1939. I was just 5 years old and my parents were what the magazines called “young marrieds.” She was barely 20 and Dad was 24. They lived in a tar-paper railroad shack and dad worked on the section gang. They had been sold on the idea that raising chickens would be an easy way to bring in much-needed income.
Nobody mentioned the problem of chicken constipation or the eye droppers filled with warm olive oil needed to treat it. We spent that whole Easter weekend out in the chicken coop with no success at all.
So that was the end of the chickens, literally. I want to tell you, it has certainly colored my picture of the ideal Easter celebration.
Once again, Easter is just a few weeks away. April also is National Pet Month. Approximately 4.1 million shelter animals are adopted each year (2 million dogs and 2.1 million cats). There are also plenty of opportunities to celebrate your furry friends with days such as National Pet Day and National Hug Your Dog Day.
April offers many opportunities for welcoming new pets into your home. Newstalk radio says that the guinea pig is the most popular non-cat or non-dog pet in Washington, although in Oregon and Idaho it’s the chinchilla. It is a season for trying out unusual pets and we’ve had our share.
There was the pretty disastrous 24 hours when Dad brought home a horned toad (actually a lizard) from the New Mexico desert as a prospective pet for my oldest son, optimistically expecting him to catch live ants to feed the small reptile. It turns out that the ants must be live, lively and arrive in a continuous stream to attract the lizard’s attention.
“I’m not sure the whole experience lasted more than 24 hours, or perhaps even more than one meal,” Number One Son recalls. “It certainly makes you think you’d better be prepared to do lots of hard work if you want to own a pet — or a kid.”
The Easter Bunny has changed a lot over the years. Our Easter Bunny of the 1930s was not the cute, fluffy creature he is today, but I really believed that somewhere there was a lean, elderly and slightly arthritic jack rabbit, wearing a blue tuxedo jacket and peering anxiously into a kettle over a fire, while the merrily bubbling liquid brought out bright colored eggs. I believed that. He would be somewhat like my Italian grandma who baked braided bread dolls with the intricate dough shapes holding an egg in place, fretting lest the eggs slipped.
My friend Lesia Alexander is a professional animal communicator, actually, able to decode what animals need from their behavior. But you don’t need to be a wizard at deciphering animal messages to understand what your animals are thinking..
Our little girl was 6 years old when her father died. Naturally she and the two brothers still at home were shattered. As the year pulled around to Easter again, I began to think that a small dog might be big enough to fill the children’s hearts. And that was how BiBi, a tiny brown-and-black Yorkie, came into our lives and captured our hearts — and I don’t even like animals.
From the beginning, I was very firm about the fact that this would not be my dog — the children would have full responsibility. I wouldn’t even touch the small bundle of fluff. No baths, no pats, she just didn’t belong to me.
Naturally the dog realized very soon that I was in charge and she set off to win me over. I ignored her coldly and totally, until the day we came home and found the house apparently deserted and the dog gone. We called and searched and couldn’t find her. The children wept desolately.
Unbelievably, we found her later sitting calmly in the upstairs bathroom, just waiting with a “Well, what took you so long” expression. I scooped her up and sat in the rocking chair weeping. “I was so worried,” I told her.
And I noticed she was favoring me with a very calculating look, like “So that’s what it takes?” Later that evening she disappeared again, and we found her back in the bathroom, trying to close the door with her head so she could enjoy all of that exciting attention again.
We had 18 Easters with Bibi in charge of our family. The children grew up and went off to college. Bibi and I were left alone until she fell asleep in my arms for the last time. She really was my dog after all.
No chickens or little dogs have been harmed in telling this story, but it would be wise to keep a sharp eye on the chocolate bunnies.
Where to find Dorothy in April
On Wednesday, April 16, Dorothy will be with historian Don Trosper at the Olympia Country & Golf Club, 3636 Country Club Road NW, to talk about “Stories of Puget Sound Pioneers.” Doors open at 5:45 p.m.
Catch Dorothy’s podcast, Swimming Upstream Radio Show, at https://swimmingupstreamradioshow.com.
Contact Dorothy via phone at 800-548-9264 or via email at Dorothy@itsnevertoolate.com.
This story was originally published April 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.