One Down,Two To Go

For Cam's 9th birthday (he'll be 11 in January), he got gerbils. A friend had recently gotten some for their kids and Cameron and Aaron had latched on to the idea that gerbils would be fantastic pets to have. My friend's supplier of the gerbils had some babies that were ready to leave their Mom, right in time for Cam's birthday, so we agreed that the gerbils and all the stuff that goes with them would be his present.

When your kid's birthday is 10 days past Christmas, it's easy to imagine that yes, gerbils would make an excellent present. Cam got Petsmart gift cards as other presents, which he promptly redeemed for a cage, wheel, food dish, water bottle, food, and stuff for the bottom of the cage. We went to go see the lady with the procreating gerbils.

With a lot of advice and a guarantee that she could tell the males from the females, we ended up taking home three (!) males. I did not want to be having any gerbil babies! The kids were thrilled. We got home, set things up in Cameron's room, and prepared to enjoy gerbil ownership. The boys named them Cookie, Lollipop, and Licorice.

For me though, it never happened - the enjoying part. I decided fairly quickly that the gerbils, or gerbs as we started calling them, were just one step up from the mice that we occasionally get in the house in the summer. They also turned out to be noisy - endless chewers - and we had to move them out of Cam's room so he could sleep. Now I had a big ol' cage of gerbils in the hallway.

After the initial few weeks of having the gerbils, even the kids pretty much ignored them. They were hard to hold, always wiggling and sometimes biting. Twice, a gerbil wiggled out of one of the boys' hands and the frantic chasing and cornering and finally catching that ensued was enough for me to declare that the gerbs stayed INSIDE the cage at all times.

Cameron would feed and water the gerbils, but only when I would remind him. He'd clean the cage every month or so, taking them out and putting them in a holding bin, while he dumped out the old and put in fresh newspaper. Then the chewing would really start. He took care of their basic needs, but there was no real enjoyment on his part either.

True to the gerbil lady's word, all three were males - we never had any babies, thank goodness. However, one of the gerbs was either confused as to the gender of the other two, or he decided that being straight just wasn't for him. Life inside that cage was like a bad prison movie. We could hear him attacking the other gerbils, their tiny little screams announcing the latest violation. The boys called this gerbil "the mean one", the "one that always climbs on the other's backs".

I kept reminding myself that gerbils usually only live about a year. I've been on the countdown since last January, waiting for them to expire. Last Saturday, one of them did.

We were cleaning up the house for a get-together with some of Troy's family, and I reminded Cameron that (a) he owned gerbils, and (b) he might want to clean out the cage before his cousins came over. He went to work.

Thirty seconds later, he came back into the kitchen, looking a little queasy.

"Mom, one of the gerbils is dead." He pressed his lips together to stop the quivering.

"Oh no, Baby. I'm sorry." I pulled him in for a hug and squeezed him tight. Just because you don't love something, doesn't mean you aren't sad when it dies.

"Better tell Dad." I said, soooooooo glad that it was a weekend and that Troy was home to deal with this. I went to find a box for the funeral.

Troy looked inside the cage and came over to talk to me quietly.

"There's not much to bury. It's pretty far gone. I think the others have been eating on it."

We asked Cameron when he'd last seen all three gerbils alive. Just a day or two. Which gerbil was the dead one? The "mean one".

Okay, that explains a lot. I think the other two finally stood up to him and took him down. Hard. Eating him was the final revenge.

Troy took care of disposing of the corpse. I was all ready to hold an elaborate send-off, but since he was stuck to the bottom of the cage and needed to be scraped off with a spatula, we decided to skip the formalities. Spatula went in the garbage too.

After the boys' tears were dried and Troy had scrubbed the cage, Cameron put some fresh newspapers, food and water inside for the remaining two gerbils. Total time of grief...maybe 5 minutes. We haven't even talked about it again. The "mean one" is not missed.

The two remaining gerbils continue to live peacefully, chewing and running about their cage, no worries to weigh them down. They took care of business. Don't mess with these gerbils.

I walk by their cage dozens of times a day. If I ever glance down and see them, all I can think is...cannibals.