People have cared for rather odd pets, as the leeches tamed and trained by Lord Erskine; others have been deeply interested in toads, crickets, mice, lizards, alligators, tortoises, and monkeys.

Wolsey was on familiar terms with a venerable carp; Clive owned a pet tortoise; Sir John Lubbock contrived to win the affections of a Syrian wasp; Charles Dudley Warner devoted an entire article in the Atlantic Monthly to the praises of his cat Calvin; but did you ever hear of a peacock as a household pet?
As it is the correct thing now to lie down all of a summer afternoon, hidden by trees, and closely watch every movement of a pair of little birds, or spend hours by a frog pond studying the sluggish life there, and as mothers are urged by scientific students to record daily the development of their infants in each apparently unimportant matter, I think I may be excused for a brief sketch of my charge, for no mother ever had a child so precocious, so wise, so willful, so affectionate, so persistent, as Kizzie at the same age.

Before he was three days old, he would follow me like a dog up and down stairs and all over the house, walk behind me as I strolled about the grounds, and when tired, he would cry and "peep, weep" for me to sit down.

Then he would beg to be taken on my lap, thence he would proceed to my arm, then my neck, where he would peck and scream and flutter, determined to nestle there for a nap.
My solicitude increased as he lived on, and I hoped to "raise" him.

He literally demanded every moment of my time, my entire attention during the day, and, alas! at night also, until I seemed to be living a tragic farce! If put down on carpet or matting, he at once began to pick up everything he could spy on the floor, and never before did I realize how much could be found there.