Hi! It’s us’n again – Tine and Dee – wepowting again. We dunno if you know this, but we’ve become big fans of Dilly the cwoco-wagon! (Grandma Note: Croco-dragon,” which is a cross between a crocodile and a dragon. Neither Dilly nor Dee and Tine are very good with so many Rs in a word.) It’s been bearwy hard on us, a’cuz she went on holiday for a week, so we misseded her while she was gone. (Her bwuder. Bob, was gone too.)

Anyway, she’s home again, and had quite the adventure! She went to a place with lots and lots of wagons and got to visit most, if not all of them! We were quite impressed!!! Imagine our swerpwize, when owa Gwandma told us about our wagon relationships! Whodathunk a pola-bear and stuffed doggy could from a famiwee wif lots of dwagons, too?

Nah, we’re not as cool as Dilly! We’re not welated to dwagons, our great-uncle, Gwandma’s bwuder, useded to have a wide vah-why-ity of dwagons himself. Gwandma told us all ‘bout it (but she has no pikchores to pwove it. Sowwy! Dilly’s pikchores were so cool!) She’s helping us tell what she told us, a’cuz there’s a whole lot to tell and a whole lotta words we nevah heard before.

Gwandma’s bwuder’s name is Danny! (Their cousins call him “Dan, Dan, the Mountain Man” a’cuz he lived two woom house on a big mountain in Va-gin-ya all by his lonesome for years!) He’s Gwandma’s older bwuder, so bearwy, bearwy, bearwy old now. (Grandma Note: Not that old! He’s only 53 now, but all of his collection of reptiles have either gotten away or died over the decades, since he first started collecting them.) Since he’s Gwandma’s bwuder, that makes him our gweat-uncle.

Even Gwandma says he was nevah a nowmal bwuder, a’cuz he was always collecting new dwagons (she calls them “weptiles and am-fib-bee-ans,” but we know they’re dwagons) and taking good care of all of ‘em. She doesn’t remember how old he was when he started collecting them, but he was young ‘nuff that his Mommy and Daddy thought it was safe to talk ‘bout what he was getting for Christmas, if they spelled it out! His Mommy told his Daddy that she was going to buy him a n-e-t for Christmas (so he could collect more turtle dwagons or catch fishies for his turtle dwagons to eat.) He got excited and said, “Oh goodie! I’m getting a net for Christmas.”

They nevah spelled Christmas gifts in front of him again, but he did get a long handle net for Christmas anyway. (He got a new one, evwee udder Christmas, a’cuz he useded them so often they’d wip apart in time.) Evwee time they saw a turtle dwagon walking along a road – in this country or Canada, where they used to go vacationing when they were little – they’re Mommy or Daddy would stop the car (yes, even back then they had cars), so Danny could go get the turtle dwagon. Usually, he found box turtles dwagons, but sometimes it was paint turtles, red-bellies, bog turtles, snappers, spotted turtles, and he even found slider’s once in a great while. (They’re pet shop turtle, so someone was mean enough to let them loose in the northeastern states, where they aren’t native, so they’d die, if’n he didn’t rescue them.)

By the time he was 14, he had about 200 turtles – 197 males and 3 females. (We askeded Gwandma how he knew if it was a boy turtle dwagon or a girl. Her face turned a funny red cah-wer, but then she remembered that they have different sizes of tails and the front of their shelves was different. She couldn’t wemembah anymore, but we suspect the girl turtle dwagons wore pretty pink ribbons on the front of their shelves, a’cuz Dilly wears them, too!)

He kept them in their backyard in a turtle dwagon pen, that was about 9’ X 12’ (a little less than 3 meters by 4 meters – almost the size of our backyard, so it was bearwy big.) It was made of 4’ high chicken coop wyah, with a small corner section closed off for baby turtle dwagons, since they are so small they could be smothered by an older turtle accidentally, or stepped on by Danny, when he went into the pen to feed them. (Some times, he used it for his small snakes, a’cuz the wyah had smaller holes, so they couldn’t s’kape.)

The smallest size, plastic kiddy pool, was dug into the ground in one side of the pen, with slate rocks along one section of it, so the turtles could get out, when they went for a swim. Also, it had a few tomato vines and some cucumbers, plus Danny’s s’perment garden. One year, he’d sow some of the watermelon seeds he saved after eating a slice; another year, he grew popcorn (that’s where Gwandma gave us the idea to grow popcorn last summer), and once he let the mullberry sapling stay, when the neighbor’s tree was dropping its fruit. (That tree got beary big, before it was removed by future owner’s of the house.)

The garden grew, a’cuz the turtles loved fresh veggies and fruit, but the turtles needed more then what could be grown in the pen to eat. Just about every day, Danny would go to a near by gwoup of lake (six lakes in all) to catch a few small sunfish or minnows to add to the pond (kiddy pool), so the turtle dwagons could have a little meat, too. Even so, with that many turtles, occasionally, he had to buy a pound of raw hamburger or some mealy worms for them. (The mealy worms stayed alive in the fridge. Ewwww!)

But, he didn’t have just turtle dwagons! He also had one to ten black snakes dwagons or gardner snakes dwagons, an iguana dwagon, sometimes some bullfwog dwagons, and a caiman, which is related to the alligator and crocodile.

Gwandma told us she spent fifteen minutes one day chasing the caiman around the turtle pen with a broom, until he let go of the bearwy biggest bullfwog dwagon – it could fit in boff of her hands, and she was 14 then, so bearwy old wif bearwy big hands – in his mouth. Only the fwog legs were sticking out of its mouth, and they kept flicking back and fowf, like it was twying to hop out. Ewwww!!! The caiman did welease the bullfwog eventually and the fwog dwagon hoppeded away. They wemained in the same pen, but she’s sure the two fwog dwagons always watcheded out for caimans, aftah that.

All those critters (that’s what Gwandma’s family called her bwuder’s pets) stayed in the turtle dwagon pen all summer, and the ones not native to New Jersey were brought in for the winter. The ones from that area (which is acwoss the wivah from us), stayed in the pen all winter, but her bwuder would fill it too the top wif waked leaves to keep them in-s…in-sah…in-sah-laded while they hibernated in winter. (Most bears hibernate, too, but Teddy Bears don’t hafta, a’cuz we live in a nice warm house. Doggies don’t hibernate, but we do like to sleep a lot!)

In his room in aquariums, he also had toad dwagons, tadpoles that turned into fwog dwagons, skink dwagons, newt dwagons, chameleon dwagons (more like the one in the video then the bulgy eye ones), horned toad dwagons, which are weally desert lizards, not toads, and salamander dwagons. The baby box turtle dwagons lived there, in the wintertime, too.

Feeding all his pets was constant work, particularly since he got 50¢ a week allowance, (we don’t get any allowance) and he was totally in charge of feeding them all. In the summertime, his older bwuder and younger sister (Gwandma) would hold an annual fair for the neighborhood kids. It included a guided tour of the museum, which was Danny’s aquariums set up on the picnic table so everyone could spend 10¢ to learn all ‘bout his collection. Also, there was a fast wide alllllll around the block in their red wagon, fortune telling by Gwandma (her oldest bwuder would tell her what the person would get – a free tour, or a free Kool-aid ice cube – in their futchur, and they would get it for free right after the reading. And, the refreshments included homemade cupcakes for 10¢ each, (made by Danny and his Mommy the day befoah), frozen Kool-aid ice cubes (one for 3¢, and two for 5¢, an extra 2¢ if they wanted Pixie Stick dust on their cubes.)

He also started raising bunny rabbits to have a litter or two to sell to local pet stores for $7 each. The first year, with one boy and two girls, 25 babies were born foah days before Easter.) Both bwuders would twap muskrats for their hides, (we don’t know what that means and Gwandma says we don’t want to know?!) and 25-30 pound snapping turtles for local restaurants to serve as soup. ($1 a pound.)

Of course, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back then, burger was only 69¢ a pound, and mealy worms were only a penny a piece. (Ewwww!)

One summer, Danny found 3 pray mantis cocoons. He put them in his toad and frog aquarium, but each cocoon hatched about 100 baby pray mantiseses, so he had too many. When they forst hatch, they are bearwy small, so some escaped too, and he had a couple of hundred baby pray mantiseses loose in his room for a while.

And, since black snakes and caimans like rodents, he also had an aquarium full of gerbils or mice. Gwandma was never sure, if they were pets or merely food, but they had babies whenever the big reptiles needed dinner. (We’re not shor what that means, but Gwandma says we don’t wanna know either.) His critters always had plenty to eat.

Danny’s love of dwagons didn’t end when he grew up either, but this is a story about his many dwagons – not his chickens living in trees, a peacock, lots of fishies in his homemade ponds, bigger snakes and caimans, dogs, pigs, goats, even more turtles, and bunnies. (He used the bunnies as lawn mowers, not to eat. Not as good as Aunt Valentine (Dee’s aunt, Tine’s Mommy) has it, but it’s a good thing to be an animal living with Danny and not ending up being dinner for him or his critters!)

Unfortunately, his life got too busy to keep getting new pets, so all of his critters have died over the years. (Did we mention he is bearwy, bearwy, bearwy old?!) We will never get to see them. Mommy thinks it is good news though. His current girlfriend didn’t know about his love of critters, so she askeded him to marry her, and he said “yes.” He’s getting married this month, and won’t have a single dwagon at the wedding!

We understood as Gwandma told us ‘bout his dwagon pets, but we might have falling asleep, when she got to the yucky kissy-wissy, lovey-dovey, gooey, boy-cooties, stuff! Ewwww!