Pickle Joins the Hamster Guerrillas

I have a story to tell you.  It's about three girls, two parents, and a small village worth of rodents. My first pet was Rosie the guinea pig. She was white with brown spots and had little brown ears.  I loved her. I fed her carrots, and held her, and once I got really mad at my sister for trying to bathe her with the garden hose. The one day, Rosie died, and I learned about what it meant for a special pet to die.  I tried to feed her a carrot but she wasn't moving, and Doug (my Dad's best friend from the last post, who recently partied it up at the Newman homestead) said to me, "you know honey, I don't think she's ever gonna eat the carrot."

So, we buried her in the backyard, under a tall pine tree, and my Dad performed the eulogy. Apparently, as I wept over the open shoe box that held her, my father came up with a rhyming eulogy on the spot, which nearly drove my Mom to laughter.

After Rosie my sisters got two guinea pigs- Shelley named hers Shelley, and Melissa named hers Fuzzy.  The little critters had been sick when we got them from the pet store, and the died within a week.  They went under the pine tree.

Shelley, Shelley, and Fuzzy

Now my memory is getting spotty- there was Marshmallow the teddy bear hamster, Scooter the dwarf hamster, the sweet mouse named Midnight, another guinea pig named Shelley, a mama guinea pig named Ginger, and a bunch of cannibalistic gerbils.

Soon to be a cannibal.

I wish I were joking about the gerbils.

I remember walking into the room I shared with my sister, looking in their house, and knowing something was horribly wrong. Apparently the pet store had sold us a boy and a girl, they had babies and then the Dad started eating them.  My Mom told me that after she cleaned everything up she took all the gerbils to the local animal shelter.  In her words, "the girl at PAWS was looking at me like I was fucking crazy! But I just couldn't handle it anymore, so I took the cannibals to the shelter."

Ginger and a remote control.

There was also my rabbit named Cosmo, who was jumpy (imagine that) and not as cuddly as a dog, and who I got tired of, so I gave him to one of my sisters as a birthday present.  On a side note, I have a habit of doing that- re-gifting things to other people, particularly my sisters. There were other gift giving occasions when the sisters would chide me, "Lindsey, I know you had two copies of that book- I saw it in your room!"

The story that takes the cake might be Pickle, the hamster that ran away.  One day he disappeared, and my Dad took us aside and solemnly told us that Pickle had run off into the backyard to join the hamster guerrillas. Being a literal child, I though he meant that Pickle had joined the hamster gorillas, who lived in the backyard in gorilla suits.  When I was in college my parents told me that what had really happened to Pickle was that the poor guy had fallen down an air duct and broken his neck.  Before we would get home from school they would run around trying to locate the source of the smell.

The pine tree is still in our backyard, and I wonder what will happen if my parents ever move.  Should we put a little picket fence around the tree, to let people know what lies there?  My Dad has joked about putting the house on eBay instead of going through the monumental task of cleaning it out.  The add could read something like this-

"House full of memories.  Comes with a full basement and rodent cemetery in backyard.  Offers accepted."

Pickle, wherever you are, I hope your days are full of sleeping in the shade and shooting guns in the jungle.

Rest in peace, my dearly departed little pets.