Cat Theft, Duck Theft
March 11th 2008 21:00
I had grown up in a rough, predominantly white working class suburb where some of my neighbours advocated cruelty to animals. So it was no surprise when my pet ducks, Brown-o and White-o went missing.
We had always believed they had been stolen. They were smart ducks and knew the way home, although my sister and I normally had to round them up. This day, my mother decided to test them and see how long it would take for them to come home. She told us not to get the ducks. Hours passed and when we did go to get them, they weren’t at their usual playing spot. We asked everyone we could think of; a woman right at the very top of our street said she had seen them that afternoon. After that, the trail went cold.
I had always regretted my recklessness. My mum didn’t say anything at the time but years later she told me she also regretted postponing us from rounding them up. Given how cruel some of my neighbours could be (one boy threatened to get his aggressive mongrel to kill them), I could see someone seeing two ducks and thinking, ‘Hmmm…dinner!’
For a while I wondered what had really happened to my pets. Then my neighbour told me she had had some of her pets stolen in the past. Finally, I was reading a book called Good Catkeeping by Diane Morgan and there was a section on pet fraud. Pet fraud? I happen to work in the fraud prevention department for a bank so I was intrigued as to what this was. Well, according to the author, there are some sick people out there who steal people’s pets so they can then ring up the owners and collect their reward. How sad. Mind you, even if my ducks had been a target of fraudsters, I would have happily paid the ransom. Ditto any other animal I have as a pet. But I cannot believe people can stoop so low as to prey on other people’s pets.
We had always believed they had been stolen. They were smart ducks and knew the way home, although my sister and I normally had to round them up. This day, my mother decided to test them and see how long it would take for them to come home. She told us not to get the ducks. Hours passed and when we did go to get them, they weren’t at their usual playing spot. We asked everyone we could think of; a woman right at the very top of our street said she had seen them that afternoon. After that, the trail went cold.
I had always regretted my recklessness. My mum didn’t say anything at the time but years later she told me she also regretted postponing us from rounding them up. Given how cruel some of my neighbours could be (one boy threatened to get his aggressive mongrel to kill them), I could see someone seeing two ducks and thinking, ‘Hmmm…dinner!’
For a while I wondered what had really happened to my pets. Then my neighbour told me she had had some of her pets stolen in the past. Finally, I was reading a book called Good Catkeeping by Diane Morgan and there was a section on pet fraud. Pet fraud? I happen to work in the fraud prevention department for a bank so I was intrigued as to what this was. Well, according to the author, there are some sick people out there who steal people’s pets so they can then ring up the owners and collect their reward. How sad. Mind you, even if my ducks had been a target of fraudsters, I would have happily paid the ransom. Ditto any other animal I have as a pet. But I cannot believe people can stoop so low as to prey on other people’s pets.
Photo by Fir0002. Used in accordance with the terms of Wikimedia Commons’ GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
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