What is your favorite animal?

What is your favorite animal? Is that a kindergarten art prompt or a bad pick-up line in college? Whether you are drawing in the medium of crayola or looking for a mate this question has been a conversation starter since man became self-aware.

One of my favorite things to do on Sunday afternoon is watch nature shows. David Attenborough, the British voice of nature programming for over fifty years, is one of my heroes.

This guy has spent his life travelling the world and documenting life on the planet. He is in programs on every continent, describing every aspect of life on Earth.

When I was a boy of about four-years-old a lizard found its way onto our porch. My dad told me to pet it. I knealt down and stretched out my hand. It promptly bit my finger and ran away. That is one of my earliest nature memories.

Now, in my mid-thirties, I have three lizards and a frog in my bedroom. I have two ferrets, a cockateil, and a dark chocolate labrador in my garage, and a 55 gallon fishtank we keep snakes and tarrantulas in during summer months. Keeping reptiles in the bedroom means we have a cricket cage too. The cricket noises are soothing at night. My wife was apprehensive at first, but she easily falls asleep to their sounds now.

There are times, however, when even my patient wife is pushed to the limits with my animals. The boys knocked over the cricket keeper yesterday. Fifty crickets found their freedom in our upstairs bedroom. Free crickets plus one scrambling husband and three loud intercepting kids, equals one not-happy wife. We rounded most of them up but there is chirping coming from two heater vents now. Oops.

Animals are amazing. Life is precious. If you ask what my favorite animal is, it will be what I am observing at the moment. We found the herd of Rocky Mountain sheep through a spotting scope on the mountain behind our house last month. Thirty of these large animals dotted the cliffy mountainside. We've lived in this house for eight years and this was the first time we got to watch them. For about a week they worked their way across the face of the mountain and now they are gone. We watched the red breasted robbins pull worms from our yard on Saturday morning. We are waiting for the baby quail to arrive this year. Pretty soon the kids will want jars to keep insects in. Spring is a great time for animal lovers and their offspring.

So, although I haven't answered the question, what is your favorite animal? What about it fascinates you? Feel free to answer in crayon.