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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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2 comments:
I remember it.
We're about the same age, and I had the exact same experience with the Stromberg's catalog. The Whole Earth Catalog too!
Except ultimately I ordered from Stromberg's!
A trio of Gray English Call Ducks, the cute "decoy ducks," once maybe raised for that but since for show and pets. They were large, apparently mallards or mallard crosses, and poorly colored at that—the drake had brown flecks in his green head.
Stromberg's couldn't keep all those animals, of course. They bought cheap from various sources.
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