Most highly favoured animal

[Samoan]

Which and why ? Spill the beans.

[GoogaMooga]

Cat, for it's litheness and selfishness. Dogs are supposed to be more intelligent, but I don't see it that way. As a kid, I had a Blue Russian pedigree cat without even knowing it. It would lie on my stomach and purr in synch with my breathing. Up the street there was an aviary, and my cat would frighten the birds. So we got complaints and sold the cat to an old lady. She gave me and my brother £1 each (10 DKK); later we found out it was worth hundreds .

[Rayge]

Gorilla.
Strength combined with delicacy, beauty and dignity. Uninfected by language.

[Deebank]

Gorilla.
Strength combined with delicacy, beauty and dignity. Uninfected by language.

That would depend on how you define language.

[Polishgirl]

I can't choose between cats, dogs and guinea pigs.

[Rayge]

Gorilla.
Strength combined with delicacy, beauty and dignity. Uninfected by language.

That would depend on how you define language.

Of course.
But were asked four our choice, and our reasons, so I'm hardly going to use anyone else's definitions .
The clue to mine is in the 'uninfected'.

[Spock!]

Cattle.



Until last year I had a fairly inexplicable liking for cows, when asked why I had no good answer other than the beauty of their eyes, their curiosity, their generally peaceful nature & so on. I was born five houses down from the top of the hill that was a t junction. To the left is was a country lane with a farm house and yard about 100 yards along. The next building, probably about a quarter of a mile along was a vet's practice that included a working blacksmith. We had a long garden at the end of which was a low fence that overlooked field and there was a ditch that at almost all times of the year had a small stream running in it. At the bottom of the field was a small copse where rooks roosted. We lived in this house until I was five. I remember looking over the fence and being fascinated by the ploughing, sowing and harvesting operations, particularly fascinating was the binder that gathered loose straw and spat out cuboids of baled straw.

Last winter when visiting my mother I suggested that we go through her old photos and discovered some I didn't remember seeing before of our house under construction and of some of its rooms. It had been a new build, part of an estate development, my parents had selected the plot and had some limited options about the construction and finishing of the house. This naturally led to conversation in which I told my mum some of my memories of our time their, and she mentioned that there had been cows in the field, which I don't remember at all. She said it must have been when I was one or two, and that my dad had fixed a plank onto which I could stand to look into the field and that I had been fascinated by the cows, a huge liking for which I've obviously retained.

I took a year out before university where I worked at the National Institute for Research in Dairying. My first two weeks there were spent in a field with a herd of cows, a stopwatch & clipboard, monitoring certain behaviours of the cattle, two of the most wonderful weeks of my life. Hard to believe I was being paid (about a heady £26 a week) to bask in the sunshine with my favourite animals.


The gorgeous Jersey.




The wonderful Red Devon

[Samoan]

Great stuff and what a summer job. (Did you then go on to Reading by any chance ?)


I've this memory of staying on my Uncle's farm when I was yea high and marvelling at how a cow broke away from a herd being moved to fresh pasture and jumping clean over a metal gate. I think it was a Friesian.

[Matt Wilson]

Eric Burdon

[Spock!]

Great stuff and what a summer job. (Did you then go on to Reading by any chance ?)

Thanks. No, having been born and brought up there I was longing to leave & being enamoured by almost all things Liverpudlian I went on to Liverpool, satisfying many Beatle, Mersey beat poet, football and musical urges; it was the time when the Teardrops, OMD and Echo were rising to prominence, Liverpool were winning the league regularly and European trophies too. Proud to have been a member of the Kop!


Sibly Hall was built below the copse I mentioned, I remember it being built. Now all the farmland of my childhood has been built over & the relatively wildness of the woods around Lakeside tamed.

[Deebank]

I originally though this was the most highly flavoured animal thread...

Tuna? Pheasant?

[Loki]

[Tom Waits For No One]

[copehead]

I originally though this was the most highly flavoured animal thread...

Pheasant?

Depends if it is well hung