Small Pets
After the guinea pigs featured in Special Delivery there were more critters–of course. This is the journey through reptiles and that most unbelievable pet–the rat. Can you imagine inviting rats into your house–ON PURPOSE?
I’ve always loved animals but I’m timid with them. I wrote endless reports on animals in second grade. I learned my eagle-eye parking skills combing the curbside at Lincoln Park Zoo most Saturdays. I knew all the dog breeds. I longed for companionship—but I wheezed. A mynah bird was my heart’s desire.
First in the line of furless pets were goldfish—an unrewarding, often suicidal pet. I would make fish gravestones for the toilet seat. This at least kept my parents entertained. I graduated to turtles. They were much more interesting; they could be carried, raced, and kissed—if no one was supervising.
I had a series of little red-eared turtles, too insignificant to remember. But I had one rather more complex turtle. He was a little bigger and a little more feisty. There was no debating his name—he was born to be Speedy Gonzalez. He usually ran in the right direction and fast.
They told me I’d outgrow the allergies but I didn’t, so my daughter had reptiles too—lizards. Turtles were politically incorrect, by then. The reticulated skink arrived for her 7th birthday. This animal was perpetually terrified. It was hard to catch, let alone hold and play with. When we sat down to the Passover Seder that year and the youngest asked “why is this night different from all other nights” we all knew the answer was because Skinky lost his tail after the visiting family mobbed and grabbed at him. Hours later, after both hunger and the Red Sea were crossed, the lonely tail was still twitching.
We took in a friend’s skinks, which were much bigger and better socialized. They would sit on our heads and whisper in our ears—charming lizard tricks. They also chomped down crickets like t-rex taking on a subdivision. They terrorized our original skink. We bought peace with partition. Eventually, we needed something bigger on the cuddle factor.
Some people just cannot have rats—that naked tail gives them the creeps. That was my husband. But for the rest of us, the rat is the Cadillac of rodent pets. They’re smart. Our rats were never so highly trained as the rat-lady’s rats that we’d visit at the pet store. Those rats would do anything you wanted, after a little belly massage. Who wouldn’t? But rats like to be handled and played with and they are good parents. I for one, had no compunction about selling baby rats to pet stores for snake food.
Typically we’d get rid of the old pair and all but two of the babies. Once, we kept two boys and a girl. I felt obligated to the little gray fellow, after he escaped for two days and collapsed, near death, in the laundry sink. When that little gray rat birthed the second of our litters to arrive in one week— and the same week as every other domestic rat in the metropolitan area birthed—I knew that rat sexing was not my strong suit. The pet stores all turned us down and the population explosion was terrifying for all of us.My daughter had become totally bored by the whole little-animal-thing. It was time to be done with it. At 4:30 one Friday, when the Audubon society said they would take all the rats for their injured raptors, we loaded up the car and got the lead and the rats out. Pet free at last, at least until the killer bunny.
We stood in half a foot of fresh snow as we looked across the waste and terror of Birkenau. How grave this grave. We were lucky I think. The blank Polish sky warmed up to almost-freezing and laid a new blanket of white across the legacy of horror. It was reverent, clean, and peaceful. It almost seemed unfair.
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