In the spring of 2006 (well over a year ago), our family saw the addition of two gerbils, Biff and Bertha, and by midsummer of that year, we had eight more gerbils.  Consequently, Biff and Bertha will never see other again. 

Hazel kept a female cage with Bertha and her two daughters.  I took Biff and two of his sons to my classroom, leaving four gerbil-sons for Emil, two of whom were arbitrarily named Lamar and two named Rascal. 

There had always been some discord and strife in Emil’s large gerbil-terrarium, which I merely attributed to the affects of testosterone on juvenile males.  Early this year, however, Emil called for my immediate assistance with a major gerbil-brawl in his cage.   There were horrendous gerbil screams (well, a few high-pitched squeaks really) and a roving malleable ball of fur scuffling around the cage. To quickly resolve the little skirmish, I reached in to grab one of the two fighters.  As I grabbed the gerbil, he grabbed me, with his teeth, right through my little finger.  I believe that I may have loudly uttered a sharp word of profanity, and when he refused to relinquish his grip, it may be been followed by a long line of similar expletives.  Hazel came running when she heard the commotion (or mostly when she heard her mother saying a lot of words that her mother doesn’t usually say).  Even the dog came running.  There I stood:   I was holding a gerbil, as he was holding me.

 As you may know, fingers are well-supplied with nerve endings, and those nerve endings were letting me know that they were not overly fond of having this gerbil impale his fangs through my muscles.  I couldn’t rip off the gerbil because his teeth were firmly clenched directly through the meatiest part of my finger, and I didn’t want to mangle my own flesh any more than it was already being mangled.  I tried to be careful not to squish the little thing, but, at the same time, I really wanted to squish the little *#%@.  The dog appeared very interested in the gerbil, but, if I let her have it, the consequences remained equally dire for my finger.  I thought perhaps I could place the gerbil under water to make it let go, so I ran to the kitchen, plunged my hand and gerbil into a stream of water and pried apart the tiny locked jaws.  I released the vicious creature.  It dropped dead onto a dishcloth in the sink.  Oops, I think maybe I squished it. 

(Please note, that, as no autopsy was performed, the cause of death cannot be definitively confirmed, though a healthcare professional has concluded that the death may also have been the result of a myocardial infarction caused by the shock of cold water.) 

I looked beside me to see Emil standing there with a look of horror on his face.  Now, I have no problem handling cute cuddly little gerbillies under normal circumstances, but when one lies dead like a drenched rat on a dishcloth in my sink, with an expression that comes as close to grimacing as I’m sure a gerbil face ever can, I confess, I treated it with as much disdain as I would a dead skunk that had been rotting in the hot sun on a highway for the better part of a week.  I used something white (I don’t know if it was a plastic grocery bag or a paper towel) to pick up gerbil, dishcloth and all.  I turned to Emil and curtly asked if he wanted a funeral, and, with the biggest eyes he’s ever had, he quickly declined, and I threw Lamar or Rascal, or whatever his name was, in the garbage. 

Not only do fingers have lots of nerve ending, they are also well-supplied with blood vessels.  There was blood, my blood, splattered in and around the sink and down the hall carpet.   Once the blood was cleaned, and my finger wrapped with ice and paper towel to stem the bleeding, I began to wonder two things. 

One, was Lamar/Rascal actually dead?  Perhaps he was just lying unconscious in the garbage, and if he awoke, I would either have to kill the rodent again, this time while I had greater control of my faculties, or I would have to nurse back to health this mentally-deranged gerbil who had by now, quite possibly, acquired a taste for human blood.  If he regained his health, we’d still be left with a psychotic demonically-possessed gerbil to contend with, or if he was dying, we’d have to watch him suffer in agony until the fateful moment. I quickly packaged up the garbage and took it/him outside to freeze in the -40° wind-chill.  

The second thing that crossed my mind was that there was a only a 50% chance that I plucked the aggressor out of the fight and a 50% chance that I had just murdered a poor innocent cute cuddly little pet, who, in his passionate attempts to protect his very life and save himself from the tyranny of an oppressive brother, had simply retaliated on whatever flesh was closest, which just happened to be mine.  Inspection of the gerbils in the cage, however, revealed one gerbil covered in blood, his own, not mine this time.  We feared that the wounds might prove fatal for the lowly injured gerbil, but his little gerbillie bothers cleaned him up nicely, and he has since made a full recovery.  So, either I caught and killed the villainous aggressor, or I scared the bully gerbil into good behaviour after seeing his dearly-departed brother squished before his beady little red eyes, as Emil’s gerbil cage has been amazing tranquil since that fateful night.    

And, as Hazel says, “we only have nine gerbils now.”