All Things Bright and Beautiful

Can we talk about rodents for a bit? I don't mean the big gray ones on the subway platform, the size of small dogs. I want to talk about why parents cave to the reasonable but occasionally misguided notion, often directed by severe guilt, that children require rodents, particularly inner city children who have little access to nature in the wild, not counting the rats?

We good-hearted, animal loving parents run out and purchase these tiny creatures and their accompanying accessories -- organic food, roomy cage (a classic six at least), fresh-picked organic hay, house to sleep and hide in, non-bleached organic bedding, filtered water bottle, toys, flatscreen TV -- and $150 later, there it is, ensconced in your house. A tenant. Your kid spends exactly four minutes with it and then, guess who cleans, nurtures, feeds, coos, and spends quality time with the inmate? Guess who really bonds with it when the kids are plugged into the Wii?

Recently, we relocated our dear little friend, a guinea pig called Delilah, to New Jersey, after a mere three month sojourn in my daughter's room. We'd noticed a correlation between our cat's inordinate amount of time spent staring Delilah down from a distance, and her refusal to leave the cage except when pulled at full force (and even then she grabbed the sides of the door with her little hands as we tried to extract her). Delilah, who is now Lily, is delirious in Fort Lee. She has an older sibling, Lucy, and runs freely around a duplex townhouse, and obeys a single, nine-year old mistress. She definitely traded up and we have pics to prove it. My daughter cried for a day then the tears stopped as if on cue and she asked if we could try a couple of dwarf hamsters -- perhaps?

I was reminded of our experience while speaking to a friend yesterday who regaled me with the tale of Hamletta -- her hamster that broke its leg last week. The babysitter and the kids rushed Hamletta to the vet, who put a cast on her miniscule limb. The hamster, being of tiny mind and huge teeth, promptly chewed off the cast. The vet applied another, at no small cost. Same deal. Sorry, said the vet, the big heave-ho is your only option now. He didn't use those exact words.

At this point, my friend and her husband were already injecting Hamletta with a nightly concoction of antibiotics and painkillers, after a full day at work, followed by a full evening, chasing the terrified animal around her cage -- once a highly social and friendly creature that was now a petrified mess. It wasn't a life for them, or her. And it was costing. So they pulled their kids aside and came clean. Hamletta is going to, you know, well, not be here any more.
"The kids caught onto the euthanasia word really fast," my friend explained, and both of them abruptly fell to pieces, noisily, all over the floor. After much talking and explaining, they returned Hamletta to the vet, and my friend's daughter picked out a replacement and named this lucky creature Zippy. But hold it. The vet then tells them that euthanasia might not be necessary. Friend's kid stamps her foot. Now she wants Zippy. Hamletta can go to you-know-where. Friend is a therapist and explains the problem using lots of feeling words. Kid is contrite and then mournful. Kid is also sensitive (and smart) and wonders aloud if perhaps Hamletta should have been discharged to the great beyond a few days earlier to prevent her suffering? Limping hamster returns home but things spiral out of control and suddenly, playing God appears to be a wonderful option.
"It's like she knows," my friend said, sadly, having just administered another injection.
"Is the hamster going to be, you know, deaded, today?" her husband asked, reverting to the language of his three-year old, confused by the semantics of it all (he's a lawyer, language is a loaded barrel). His wife shrugged.
"So we can get Zippy?" the daughter asks, without missing a beat. Mother shakes her head. Hamster cowers. Daughter holds back a tantrum. Three-year old brother announces proudly to his sister that he is the only one in the house with a pet now (if you can call a fish a pet). My friend is wiped out -- exhausted, burned out, done with rodents for the foreseeable future.

As we leave this tragic scene that is undoubtedly being played out around the city, a word from the wise for those of you thinking that the furry-rodent, with a two year lifespan, is a small price to pay to stop your kid nagging.

Might we suggest taming some of those house-broken roaches that scuttle freely across your counter tops (only when there are guests around), or the pigeons that fight to get into your window when they aren't crapping all over it, or admiring adorable canines from afar, the ones that muck up your shoes with their enormous deposits (only when you are on your way to an important meeting)? And if all that fails to appease your cherished ones, may we suggest a great therapist, with firsthand knowledge of such things? We have the perfect candidate.