other critters of mine

I'm not sure I quite know how to live without a pet.  So, even when I can't have something warm and fuzzy that can curl up with me in bed at night, that hasn't stopped me from loving a critter of some sort.

Ginger the Gerbil.  I wanted a cat, of course, and we did have Fritz, the dog.  But I wanted a pet of my own.  So one day, I managed to talk my mother into letting me get a gerbil.  I very originally named him Ginger, which was, indeed, his coloring.

He was a funny little thing.  I liked to let him out of his cage to run around my bedroom in my parents' house, enjoying watching him sniff and explore everything.  I kept an empty tissue box upside down as a sort of "cave" for him to hide in, which he seemed to really enjoy.  He had, of course, the fun little accouterments in his cage as well, the mirror and bells and whatever else I could get for him to play with and keep him occupied.

I only had him about a year when, one night, he suddenly seemed to go crazy, rattling the bars on his little cage very intensely.  It was so loud and disturbing that it was keeping everyone awake, and yelling at the little thing to stop it obviously didn't do any good.  So I did what one would do for birds that need settled down; I put a small towel over most of his cage, and turned out the lights.  This did seem to settle him down, and I was relieved.

Until the next day.  He was dead in his cage.  I went through tremendous feelings of guilt:  did covering the cage kill him?  Why didn't I understand that he was trying to tell me he was sick?

But, of course, guilt does not bring them back.  I had to bury little Ginger and say goodbye.  So I laid him in a small box, and we dug a hole for him in the backyard, where he rests to this day, along with the beloved dogs and Karma.
 

Crab.  As you may be able to guess by his less than imaginative name, Crab was a Hermit Crab.  College dorm rooms tend to be very strict on what you can and cannot have as pets, but for some odd reason, hermit crabs were allowed.

I didn't know a thing about hermit crabs.  The pet store was not very helpful in supplying information, either.  I tried feeding him hamburger and lettuce, but he just did not want to eat, and he had a very unfortunate short little life.
 

BJ & Chopin.  I lived in Florida for one year after college, in a no-pets apartment complex.  Well, no pets meant no fuzzy, furry, warm critters to curl up with you at night.  So I decided, in spite of the crab failure, that I would try goldfish.  I adopted two little goldfish, got a simple bowl and a few accouterments, and I had a couple of finny pets.

I named them BJ and Chopin, for Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and the classical musician Chopin, both of whom were Pisceans (what better names for fish?).  Unfortunately, I did not do much better with fish than I did with Crab, and it was not long before I found them both floating in their little home.  Sad to say, I didn't even give them a decent send-off, but flushed them down the proverbial toilet.  Although I do think the idea of fish being sent to the Beyond through water may be somehow appropriate.
 
 

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