Pets of a different color

When I think pets, I think dogs. 

I also acknowledge that there are plenty of folks who are cat lovers, so, pets also equal cats.

Widening the list, people have pet birds, pet fish, pet snakes, pet rats, pet gerbils, pet hamsters, pet turtles.

To each their very own pet choice.

So that goes for Marsi Darwin of Michigan who share her home with a chicken named Peanut.

Peanut was a complete and utter rescue.

Marsi and her husband Bill run a no-kill farm, and over 20 years ago, Marsi was about to toss what she thought was a rotten egg "into a pond for turtles to eat." Then to her wondering ears did appear but a teeny-tiny little peep. 

“I heard a second chirp, and I realized that the chick was alive and didn’t seem to have an egg tooth to get out of its shell,” she said, referring to the part of the beak a chick uses to crack open the egg from the inside.

Darwin looked closely and saw a tiny, barely visible crack, so she decided to give the chick a little help.

“I gently peeled her out of the egg, and there was this wet little mess, sitting in my hand,” she recalled. (Source: Washington Post)

The chick's mother wouldn't take her back, so Darwin decide to raise it, naming her Peanut because she was something of a runt. And all those years after Peanut's fortuitous chirp, 

...the bantam hen [now 21] is now earning recognition: Guinness World Records has named her the world’s oldest living chicken.

“The average chicken lives five to eight years, so it’s quite the achievement,” said Darwin.

I believe that this average chicken life refers to layers, not broilers and fryers. Most of them live - at best (at worst?) - a scant couple of months in the factory before heading off to their demise. In any case, Peanut has lived a mighty fine life, pet-wise, right down to the blueberry yogurt she gets for breakfast each day and the TV watching she does while snuggling up to Marsi. (She - Peanut, not Marsi - did spend a number of years living a relatively normal chicken life as a layer, but she made her way back into the house a while back and has never left.)

And now she's (Peanut, not Marsi) a record holder, the Darwins now aiming her toward breaking the Guinness record as the oldest chicken ever. That would be Muffy, who died in 2011 at the ripe old chicken age of 23 and a half years of age. Peanut, meanwhile, is the subject of a kids' book that Marsi (a retired librarian) has written:

“I hope to share Peanut’s message that even if you’re rejected or might feel like a misfit, you can still find someone to bond with and have a long, productive life,” she [Marsi, not Peanut] said.

These are still words to live by, but I still can't imagine bonding with a chicken.

I can't imagine bonding with a bull, either. But out in Nebraska, Lee Meyer not on only bonds with Howdy Doody, a Watusi-longhorn steer, but he (Meyer, not Howdy Doody) has even modified his car - an old Crown Vic police ve-HIC-le - so that Howdy Doody can ride shotgun. 

Meyer's says that his gentle giant, although weighing a literal ton, is more dog-like than raging-bull like:

Howdy Doody enjoys going on walks on a leash, getting treats and, yes, feeling the wind rush past his face when they go on rides. Howdy Doody also knows some commands, such as “back up” and “come here.” (Source: Washington Post)

And while Peanut likes her blueberry yogurt, Howdy Doody's special treat is ice cream.

“Howdy Doody is probably the most spoiled steer in all of northeastern Nebraska,” said Meyer’s wife, Rhonda.

The steer is something of a Nebraska celebrity, appearing in local parades.  And now that a video of a recent car ride has gone viral - with millions of views - his renown has gone international.

Meyer, by the way, didn't start out to be a rancher, or a bull chauffeur, for that matter. He's a retired machinist who got Howdy Doody, along with another longhorn and a half-dozen bison, so he'd have something to do in his retirement.

Bantam hen. Longhorn steer. Pets of a different color. To each their own. That said, Grace O'Malley - my brother Tom's sweet puppy - is my idea of a pet: