Every day for the past couple of weeks I’ve approached our upstairs hallway with trepidation that is mingled with love and pity. Other members of the family have had stronger emotions: One or two have been found at odd moments kneeling in the hallway, holding back tears. On the floor there, between two bedrooms, stands a small table. On the table, which is forever being flecked with little bits of fluff that one must sweep away, sits a cage. And behind the bars of this cage live three gerbils who have done little but enchant everyone since they came to live with us a year or so ago.
“Hello, you cute little gerbs!” people can’t help but say, as they pass from one room to another. It’s almost impossible not to acknowledge these silent prisoners, which though unresponsive somehow seem to return the family’s friendliness by continuing to be utterly adorable.
With their tiny inquisitive noses and prehensile front paws, the gerbils are as endearing when they’re gnawing sunflower seeds as they are when they are curled up together in a little warm furry pile, snoozing. If you give a trio of gerbils the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels, they become hilarious: Just as one begins dashing back and forth inside the cylinder, the others will fall upon the ends and begin nibbling like fury. Nothing thrills the gerbil sensibility more than a cardboard tube, unless it’s an unguarded bowl of treats.
Unfortunately, just as a litmus test reveals acidity, so did the presence of gerbils alert us to an undiagnosed allergy in one of the children. For months, the gerbils lived in this child’s room, enthralling her no end but also filling the air she breathed with minute particles of dust and dust mites, to which, alas, it seems she has a powerful reaction. We may not have discovered her susceptibility for years, had it not been for the robust dustiness of the gerbils — thank you, darling diagnostic mammals — but now that we have, well, they can’t stay. They have to go.
My late father-in-law occasionally used to remark that “conception is a death sentence,” a phrase that disquiets but nonetheless has a great deal of truth in it. Starting life means eventually ending life; welcoming pets into a family home means eventually ushering the pets out again, one way or another.
Happily for Fidget, Dusty and Pink Ears, their next home promises to be as loving as their first. They are off this week for new digs in Virginia, where the taxes are lower, the traffic is worse, and the pet stores just as seed-filled as they are here.
The gerbils leave us with warm memories of total sweetness. They also leave us with a memento, the furry tip of Dusty’s tail, which came off abruptly during an early escape attempt, to everyone’s horror. The tiny tail-tip has resided ever since in a jewel box upstairs. It may sound like a grisly relic, but honestly, like the gerbils themselves, it’s just unbelievably cute.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
