A library that lets you check out animals?
It sounds like a fanciful idea, perhaps a premise for a children’s book. But in Sacramento in the 1950s, there was a place where kids could actually check out animals and take them home.
The service was run out of the California Junior Museum, which was located on the state fairgrounds. The museum had exhibits which taught young people about the natural world (this quaint film strip documents a field trip there), and one if its programs was a lending library for living creatures. LIFE photographer Carl Mydans, whose portfolio includes many brutal scenes of war, was there to document the cuteness.
Here’s how the library worked, according to the story in the July 14, 1952 issue of LIFE:
Children who visit the California Junior Museum can, if they are at least seven years old and have their parents’ permission, take home rats, rabbits, squirrels, or in special cases, a skunk or a porcupine. Designed to give children first-hand information about U.S. wildlife, the lending library has 40 animals which circulate about the rate of 20 a week….animals may be kept out for a week, and there is a ten-cent fine for overdue animals.
And yes, you read correctly: that list of animals available for borrowing did include a rat. The closing anecdote of the LIFE story was actually about a white rat who had been kept out past her due date:
One boy did keep a white rat past the limit, but he was excused from the fine. At the time that the rat was due back it was in the boy’s living room—busily giving birth to a litter of eight in the pop-eyed presence of every child in the neighborhood.
Sounds like quite the education.
Animal lending library In Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Animal Lending Library In Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Animal borrowers clustered around the librarian who checked applications and parents’ permission slips for lending pets, Sacramento, California, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Animal lending library In Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a story on an animal lending library in Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a story on an animal lending library In Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Youngsters on their way home from an animal lending library in Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a story on an animal lending library in Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a story on an animal lending library in Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Dirk Schwartz fed Pogie the porcupine with an ear of corn, shot for a story on a California animal lending library, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The animal lending library lent this rabbit to a kindergarten class, Sacramento, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A little boy holding his new pet snake.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A youngster with the white rat he borrowed from the animal lending library in Sacramento, California, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Skunks like this one were available for checkout from the animal lending library in Sacramento, California, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Derek Leigh checked out this skunk from the animal lending library; the skunk had its glands removed to avoid the spray of odor, Sacramento, California, 1952.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
