Georges Pet Shop: The elephants fate
As a teenager in the 1960s, I picked up and delivered film for Cullen Photo, which had the photofinishing contract for Drug Fair. On one route, there was a pet store called George’s Pet Shop that had an elephant calf in the middle of the store, enclosed in a small straw-covered pen. Whenever I drove this particular route, I stopped to see this docile young animal. I’ve often wondered what became of this pet store and that little
elephant calf. Maybe you can shed some light on this.
— Rick Meyer, Piney Point
To give you an idea of the menagerie inside the doors of George’s Pet Shop just consider this 1960 classified ad from The Post:
Alligators — Special baby crows. Horned toads, toucans, baby parrots, ocelots, honey bears, snakes, lizards, monkeys, mynah birds, parrots, finches, canaries, parakeets, mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, puppies, kittens, tropical fish. Complete pet and aquarium supplies. Open Sun. 10-6; weekdays 10-9. GEORGE’S PET SHOP, 5387 Annapolis Rd., Bladensburg.
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Answer Man isn't sure what "special baby crows" are — perhaps it was a special on baby crows — but the place certainly lived up to its billing as the "supermarket for pets."
The George in question was George Flemming, a former appliance salesman at Sears. It was at Sears that George persuaded his bosses to let him open a little pet shop, selling birds and fish. He soon branched out on his own with a pet store on Edmonston Road, then moved it to Annapolis Road, slowly enlarging it until his furred, finned and feathered empire took up half the shopping strip. Its exotic inventory drew gawkers of all sorts.
"He had a bear cub," remembers George's son, Thomas. "He had a lion cub. He had a tapir, which is a South American funny-looking thing... . This is back when you could legally have those animals."
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George also had Mo, a chimpanzee who was famous for spitting at customers and throwing things. And by "things," you know what Answer Man means. But only at the women.
"He just hated women," said Georgette Higgs, one of George's daughters. She worked at the shop and as a teen had to endure the indignity of being driven to school in her father's VW van, the outside of which was painted with monkeys.
As for elephants, George actually owned two over the years, baby Asian elephants that he purchased to rent out for political rallies, although a 1966 story in The Post said George was willing to part with his 4-month-old elephant from Thailand, for $5,000 to $6,000.
One of the elephants was eventually sold to a traveling petting zoo called Jet’s. One was rented to a Republican convention where, Georgette said, it caught a cold. “Exotic animals are very, very frail,” she said. “It developed pneumonia and passed way... . My father was heartbroken. He did everything he could to save that elephant.”
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Mo the feces-throwing chimp lived a long and happy life.
Before George died in 1981, he sold the pet store and bought a liquor store. Said Georgette, “He used to say, ‘This is easy. You don’t have to clean up after bottles.’”
Spring cleaning
That old spring on Janneys Lane in Alexandria? Springfield's Elizabeth Haynes remembers it. Wrote Elizabeth: "In 1941 my parents bought the house at 1100 Janneys Lane, on the southwest corner with Yale Drive, across from an open field that is now McArthur School."
Elizabeth said water came from a pipe at the back of an arched stone structure about two feet deep and fell into a stone basin that a horse could drink from. “I often cupped my hands for a drink from the falling water,” Elizabeth wrote. “It was cool and pure. When the street was widened, the flow was diverted into a storm sewer. If you stand there now and listen, you can hear it gurgle.”
Help Children’s Hospital
For more than a century, Children’s Hospital has been serving our community — and it’s been doing it regardless of its patients’ ability to pay. For at least 50 years, Post readers have been supporting this vital work. You can be a part of this tradition by sending a check or money order (payable to “Children’s Hospital”) to Washington Post Campaign, P.O. Box 17390, Baltimore, Md. 21297-1390. To donate online, go to washingtonpost.com/childrenshospital.
Tax-deductible donations help pay the bills of under-insured children. Our goal is to raise $500,000 by Jan. 6.
Send your questions to answerman@washpost.com.
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