In Memoriam

The first animals I got to know were our cats, MILLAN and SNURRBERG (called Snurre). Millan was a beautiful gray-coloured cat, with only one small white spot on her chest. Millan was a homless cat who was rescued by my brother. We will never know wherefrom she originally came but we think that she was a Dutch shipcat. My brother namely found her in the harbour after the ship had left the quay. Millan got several litters . In one of the litters there was a small totally black cat, Snurrberg, who originally was meant for a friend of my brother. Because of different reasons this cat still remaind with us. Snurre died as a young cat, when she had problems with having her own kittens. Millan again lived many years after Snurre and died in 1966. 

Snurre and Britta at the beginning of the 60´s.

I got acquainted with dogs at the same time as I learned to walk. To my mother´s big alarm I dashed to a nighbour´s big black New Foundland dog and put my arms around his neck. The dog, wich name was Kyon was a friendly one, who loved to get hugs, so my first contact to a dog just brought positive feelings (I, myself, cannot remember this episode but my mother has told me about it several times). My and my family´s first own dog, LOTTA, came when I was nine years old, but fortunately I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time together with different kind of animals already before that, because my grand parents owned a farm. I will never forget VIHURI, the horse and LUDDE, the kind and happy dog  (mix-race) who spent most of his time in the dog-house, trying to guard the farm.  

Ludde at the beginning of the 1960´s

Vihuri again was a so called Finn-horse, who my grand father used for work on the fields and in the forest. He was a calm and smart horse, who loved to be taken care of. It was moving to see how keen he was on letting me reach his muzzle and giving him something good to eat. Every time when I visited him in the stable he moved his feet to the right making it possible for me to reach him. Vihuri died at the beginning of  1970´s and Ludde in the middle of the same decade. I miss them both but I also remember them with joy. 

The left picture: My brother, Vihuri and I

The right picture: Me "riding" the same horse 

Both pictures are from the beginning of the 1960´s

As a kid I almost every summer took care of  baby birds who have fallen from their nests. Some of them stayed alive others did not. Many of the survivers came  back to say hallo, when they had managed to fly and to live their own life as free birds. One of the birds I never forget was Kajsa. She (at least I think it was a she) was a very special jackdaw, who just one day sat at the kitchen window.

Kajsa looked a little different than the other jackdaws, she was smaller in size and lighter in colour and her face had a different expression than the others. Kajsa felt at once at home, and it seemed to me that we had known each other for a long time, although this was the first time I had met her. Always when Kajsa was hungry she nocked at the kitchen window to tell us : "Hi I´m here and I´m hungry. Unfortunately the other jackdaws could not stand her because she was rather different, and once I saw two other jackdaws assulting her. After that incident Kajsa did not appear for a couple of days, and I already thought that the other birds had killed her, but some days later Kajsa sat again next to the window. I was happy to have her back and went outside to say hallo to her. Immediately I noticed that everything was not ok. Kajsa looked even smaller than before and she was not the same happy bird anymore, who used to give me friendly pecks when we met. This time her sad eyes told me : "Thanks and farevell". I realized that this was the last time I met Kajsa, and so it was, too.       

Kajsa trusted the humans, but her own relatives could not stand her  and they did not want her to belong to their pack. Kajsa was a wonderful "human bird", whose background  was and still is unknown to me. Most likely she had lived amongst the humans also before that and got to know their way of living. The life of the own pack was probably unfamiliar to her and may be therefore she did not fit in there.