When my pa drove a truck, back when I was a kid, he used to haul sand to a steel mill out in Indiana. There were cats running around all over the place, and every now and then he'd buy a can of cat food or tuna on the way there and feed and pet the cats while he was waiting for his turn to unload.

One day he was talking to one of the people working there, and the guy said "It's a shame about the cats--the boss is gonna poison 'em all."

Turns out that at night when it's cold they crawl into the machinery where it's still warm, and they're still there in the morning--plus they hold up traffic, and the truckers are messin' with 'em instead of making their deliveries, and if one of them got rabid they all would pretty soon.

My pa figured that it was the steel mill's land, and if they were anyone's cats they were the mill's--and it's not like they're endangered or something, so there wasn't anything he could do about it. But he picked out one of the friendlier ones and brought her home. My sister named her Cleo, and she's getting old but they've still got her.

A couple weeks later he made another delivery down there, and instead of dozens of cats running around there were just three or four. So he was talking to that same worker, and he said "well, I guess he poisoned 'em, huh?"

"Nope... Two, three times a year, he threatens to, and the truckers take 'em all home."

And geese actually make pretty good pets--and very good watchdogs. A friend of mine once saw two of 'em kill a timber rattlesnake.

Some people <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021005142859/http://home.wanadoo.nl/mh/artworks/cv2.htm">take it too far</a>, though... (<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021005142859/http://www.atheling.demon.co.uk/redvanes_horse_rituals.htm">Check the third one...</a> And am I the only one who finds it amusing that they talk in old English (or at least think they do, by throwing in a couple "thees" and "thous" and "thys"), as if they didn't make it all up about 50 years ago?)