Growing up, our house was full of animals. We seemed to collect them like Panini stickers or vinyl: welsh springer spaniels, rabbits, guinea pigs, too many cats to mention, terrapins, stick insects, giant African land snails and a siamese fighting fish.
Some of this menagerie were allowed to roam free around the house (including, perhaps inadvisably, the rabbits and guinea pigs – the furniture was covered in chew marks); others were housed in cages or tanks. But even the confined pets didn’t stay confined for long. The terrapins would frequently make a run for it, using the stone intended for them to bask on as a platform to freedom. We’d find them under the sofa or, in one notorious incident, at the bottom of the fridge, chomping lettuce (no, I have no idea how they got the door open). Still, for sheer Houdini-like escapology even the terrapins had nothing on the stick insects.
