So Many Rodents...

Most kids have a pet hamster or two, it's pretty normal. Growing up we went through 2 hamsters, 4 guinea pigs, 1 ferret, and approximately 1,000,000 gerbils...well I guess it was more like 100, but still.
Our first guinea pig was named Squeaky, she squeaked a lot. One night we had a baby sitter staying with us and we were all out swimming in the pool. Suddenly, the unexpected happened: Squeaky stopped squeaking. We slowly realized that we did not hear our beloved pet chattering away from the kitchen. We ran inside but it was too late. Squeaky was a goner. We soon replaced Squeaky with Piggy (we were pretty creative with the names.) I honestly don't remember how Piggy died, so we can move on to Piglet. Piglet was a very cute little guinea pig and my 2nd grade heart really loved her. I always fed her so many alfalfa cubes. Piglet started to get sick so we took her to the vet (which Mom thinks is a waste of money for rodents). The vet told us that Piglets teeth were too long and she couldn't close her mouth. So we had Piglet's teeth filed down to solve the problem. Unfortunately, Piglet's teeth apparently grew at a very rapid pace because weeks later she was sick again. Mom refused to take her back to the vet. Dad held little Piglet a few weeks later while she died because she could eat or drink because she couldn't close her mouth. What a weird and sad way to die. My favorite guinea pig by far was Max. We was red and white and just so wonderful. Max's death was even weirder than Piglet's. We had him outside one summer day while we were cleaning the bathroom. It got really hot outside and he was out there for a few hours. Basically his innerds got fried in the sun. I cried a lot. That was the end of our guinea pig adventures.

Then there were the 2 hamsters; Whiskers and Peanut. Whiskers belonged to Dennis and Peanut was mine. These were very smart hamsters. They would always get out of their cages. We were smart too though. We discovered that whenever they got out of the cage they went always hid behind the dryer. I think it must have been nice and warm back there. So whenever we got home and they were missing, which happened pretty darn often, we just reached behind the dryer and put them back in their cages. I think Peanut should have been named Mike Tyson because one day we were playing with our hamsters and Peanut bit Whisker's ear off. Dennis was very mad at me, I had no control over my hamster. They were very resilient little guys though. We would even put them on the trampoline some times and bounce them around. They died of natural causes at the ripe old age of 4 which is very old for a hamster.

Next was the Ferret, Peppy. One day Dad went for a jog in the neighborhood and he spotted a sign that said "Free Ferret to a Good Home." That very same day we had a new pet. Peppy was crazy. We would let her out of the cage sometimes and she would run around the house. Whenever she came into the room I was in she would trap me in the corner and bite my ankles. I was terrified of that tiny little monster. Peppy didn't last long. She was quite the biter. We gave her away free to another good home. Thank goodness.

The last of the rodent adventures was the gerbils. I will make this as short as I can. We got two gerbils. The pet store dude said they were the same sex so they would not make babies. He must have failed gerbil anatomy class because we definitely had babies. I mean there were so many gerbil babies. For a while we would take them back to the pet store for them to sell, but then they couldn't take anymore. So we were stuck. Eventually we ran out of cages and we didn't know what to do. They were multiplying fast. We even had mutant gerbils because of all the incest. Some had no legs or tails, some were albino; we had come to a breaking point. Mom made the executive decision to get rid of them. So we dumped them out into our backyard and dumped out the rest of their food with them. There was an owl in the neighborhood so we figured we were just helping out the food chain. A few years later we were moving so someone had to come inspect our house before we put it on the market. He went under the house and came back with some interesting news. There was something bigger than a mouse but smaller than a rat living under the house. Gerbils. The had formed a colony under our house. We had them exterminated once and for all.

There is a Craft family rule now: no more rodents in the house. They were super fun to play with when we were little though. Even the gerbils were fun for a while. I guess the old cliche is true: you can have too much of a good thing. We had so much goodness we had to call a professional to come exterminate it.