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I got a parking ticket because I didn’t move my
car for the street cleaning this morning. But it is not my fault. I couldn’t
move the car because the gerbil died.
I never really liked the gerbil. He was like a
little rat, except his tail was furry instead of slick. In fact I called him
The Rat even though his name was Lucky. That was the name my son gave him
because he said we were so lucky to have him.
My kids really wanted a dog, but there was no way
I was getting into a 15-year commitment to a creature, so we got a gerbil
instead; only three years max before they kick it.
It has been two and a half years, almost to the
day. And here was the little thing, feet in the air in his plastic cage. I
knew he was dead right away, because after those years of peeking in at him
through the bars, I knew gerbils don’t sleep that way.
We mostly peeked at him in the cage because he
was a biting gerbil. I would use rubber gloves to pick him up when I had to
get him out of the cage so I could clean it. Even though Lucky was supposed
to belong to my children, I was the one who had to clean his cage.
I used the gloves after he bit me one night while
I was trying to feed him. Gerbils may be small, but their teeth are sharp and
that little nip hurt. Then there was the immediate fear following the nip
that went like this: “Ouch, the little creep bit me! Wow,
that hurt. I’m bleeding! Where is the Bactine?
Who knows what diseases that thing might have. Oh
god, diseases! I could get some rodent flu or my finger could turn green and
have to be cut off. Why did I ever get this stupid thing in the first place?
Why am I the one who has to feed it? Actually, it’s
better this way, I’m the one to get bitten so I’ll be the one to die. The
kids will still have their father, they can still grow up….where is that Bacitracin?”
Of course I got no infection, but went out and
got rubber gloves right away.
So anyway, I stood there this morning staring at
the cage with the dead animal behind the bars contemplating my options. I had
promised the kids we would bury him in the back yard when the time came, but
the kids are upstate with Grandma. I thought about freezing him until the
kids came back, but the idea a frozen dead gerbil in the house for almost a
week was a little too disturbing. I thought about cremating Lucky: I could
use the oven, but since the oven only gets to 525 degrees he would cook
before he burned. Maybe the grill would work, like a pyre. No, the smell of
roasting rodent flesh might be a bit much at ten in the morning. What if I
throw him away and then just tell the kids that I buried him? They would
never know. But that seemed deceitful, and I wasn’t sure I wanted the little
guy to be trash since it was only Thursday and the garbage wouldn’t be
collected until Saturday. I was out of options. I would have to bury him, by
myself.
So after I walked the dog (oh, yeah...I got the
fifteen year commitment after all) I prepared to be the undertaker for Lucky.
I brought the whole cage into the backyard and dug a hole under the wisteria
vine. I had a little box to put him in, a cardboard coffin, but he not only
looked stiff, he was stiff. I watch enough CSI to
know that rigor mortise had set in. I watch CSI all the time, and I barely
cringe at all the bloody bodies, the sucking, glopping
noises they make when they are dissected.
But I was not comfortable handling the dead gerbil. First of all, dead
weight is heavier than live weight. I had held Lucky lots of times, and this
dead thing in my hand with the rubber glove now was heavier than he used to
be.
Then there was the stiffness. He wouldn’t fit
into the little box because he was stretched out rather than curled up in
death. I tried to sort of cram him in there, but it was not working, he kept
popping back out of the box. So I abandoned the box. I put the gerbil down
and went to get some cloth. I would wrap him like a mummy and stick him in
the hole.
That worked better. By the time I had him wrapped
so that he was totally covered and in a sort of neat package I was ready to
end this burial ritual. Well, almost, because I had a flashback to that scene
in Casino where they burry Joe Pesci alive. So I
checked to make sure Lucky was dead, then quickly put the bundle in the hole
and covered it up. Too much time to think about it would cause me to be
worried that he still wasn’t dead. Which he was. I am sure. I triple checked.
I stood up and sighed. I was relieved that the
funereal was over. I put a rock on top of the grave and gathered all the
gerbil accessories so I could throw them all away. I was never getting
another rodent, that was for sure.
I took the trash out and that is when I saw it:
the orange ticket on the windshield of my car, which was the only car parked
on the wrong side of the street. That is when I remembered that it was a
Thursday and alternate side parking rules were in effect.
I don’t suppose the judge would give me a break
if I told them I couldn’t move my car because I was burying the gerbil. And
the kids, they didn’t even care that I had done such a fine job of laying
Lucky to rest. When the dog dies, forget it. I am not getting another ticket!
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