We had a Facebook communication this week by a Sanpedrana living in the United States telling us how much she enjoyed last week’s topic on Twenty Five Years Ago on the lashing of animals. She said she loved the article and even today she lashes her dog when she does something that is intolerable. She furthermore suggested that if I have similar stories to share them, so here it goes.
Occasionally, a pet puppy would venture into the chicken coup and destroy some chicken eggs. Whenever this happened, the owner would take an egg and hold the dog’s head to the egg for about a minute and rub it hard on his face so that it would get to hate eggs. Believe it or not, this was a sure cure.
Here is another animal story. You know that every family reared hens in their yard. This was for the purpose of poultry meat as well as for their eggs. I don’t know if anyone raised hens as pets. However, at times these hens would make a clumsy fly over the neighbor’s fence. To prevent their escape, we would clip off with a pair of scissors the tip of their wings. You can bet that this kept them in their yard
Now there were some folks who had chickens but did not have a completely enclosed yard. So the chickens did tend to wander astray and get lost. Here is the remedy practiced twenty five years ago. We tied a glass pint or bottle or perhaps a noisy tin can unto the hen’s leg with a piece of string, perhaps four to five feet long. Hens grazed allover the yard or even on the street, but the weight fixed on to its legs made it difficult for them to go too far and also easily caught if you had to. Quite ingenious, right? You can hardly call this inhumane or abuse of animals. Or can you?
Let’s go now to domesticated pigeons. Oh yes, a lot of families in San Pedro used to have large pigeon houses where they raised the domesticated pigeons mostly as pets, and in few occasions for their soup dishes. These large flocks of pigeons, at times 30 or up to 75, flew large distances, but dutifully returned home to for the night and the rest of their lifetime. These birds also had the tips of their wings clipped off at times so that they would not cause inconveniences to the neighborhood.
And so it was how the villagers showed love and concern for their animals twenty five years ago.
– by Angel Nuñez, Columnist
