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When I was a kid and living with my folks in North Africa, I would cruise through catalogues my father would order. I think he got a lot of the references from Stewart Brand's Whole Earth News and The Last Whole Earth Catalogue, but I'm not sure.
In any case, I lived to flip through the catalogues of Carolina Biological Supply and Edmund Scientific, and one year we got a copy of the Stromberg company catalogue, which sold all kind of cool things from Squirrel Monkeys to Quail, and from Jagarundis to Ocelots.
The 1972 Stromberg Catalogue has now been scanned in for everyone to see what I salivated over in my youth (and what I shake my head at in old age).
Wow. Seriously? You could buy black-footed ferrets through the mail??
It was all there for anyone to buy: live Woolly Monkeys, Skunks, Chimpanzees, Raccoons, Giant Anteaters, Black Bear cubs, Great Horned Owls, Basenjis, live Trout, Afghan Hounds, Black-footed Ferrets, Porcupines, Red Fox, Peacocks, Chipmunks, Spider Monkeys, Beaver, Badger and English Bulldogs too.
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No, we never ordered anything. There are no dead Squirrel Monkey or Giant Ant Eater stories in my house.
As a kid in Africa I had a goat, a dog, 20 chickens, a hedgehog and a couple of rabbits, and for a while a chameleon and an African Gray Parrot as well. I did not lack for wildlife, and spent a lot of time collecting beetles and butterflies, as well as slingshot-plinking at cats, chickens and pigeons whenever I was not trapping birds.
But the Stromberg catalogue? Damn! That was the thing to spark the imagination of a 12-year old boy, wasn't it?
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5 comments:
Interestingly enough, I have a critter from the top page: A Mille Fl-ur banty rooster.
Two for $10 for chicks at the feed store, so prices have come down.
You used to be able to buy AKC Registered dogs and some other animals from Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward too.
Like you I never did but I used to look longingly at the pictures of the Collies due to Albert Payson Terhune. They would have probably been better than what is showing at Westminster now.
Debi and the Tx JRTs
I love the Strombergs catalog today! Just poultry though. They have great customer service. My mother had a pet ocelot in the 50s, but she didn't buy it from a catalog.
And in the 1970s, one could apparently still buy a pair of Przewalski's horses for about $70,000. They were extinct in the wild as of 1969. Today? Priceless.
Wow, the most exotic things I recall seeing advertised in a magazine were Sea Monkeys, and they were a terrible disappointment. (G) Ditto for x-ray glasses!
When I was a child I saw a documentary about Africa, it might have even been about the Adamsons, which showed a Spiny Tenrec as a pet. I became obsessed, I NEEDED one! My 10-year-old self even made calls to various pet stores, in search of one. Guess I was about 30 years ahead of the hedgehog craze in America. Now there are hedgehog rescues in my little cow town. Jeezus, we are a dumb species. Good thing reading a book will prepare a person for ocelot ownership.
Seahorse
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