My wife Barb came into the living room and sat down on the couch. I was in my rocking chair across from her.
“Brenda died today,” she said. “I found her in the corner of her aquarium.” Brenda was the matriarch of a family of nine gerbils who have lived in our living room for the past few years. They dwell in four aquariums of various sizes and sadly, Brenda was all alone in hers for the last few months because two of her daughters were beating her up and would have killed her. Gerbils are usually very sociable creatures so it must have been tough for her being alone, but her daughters seemed to think it was time for Mom to go.
We might have sent them for counselling but there is a shortage of gerbil psychologists in our town.
When Barb told me about Brenda, she didn’t look in the direction of the poor gerbil’s aquarium nor did she point to it. But when he heard the news, our poodle Toby jumped off the couch and raced to the little table on which Brenda’s home sat. He looked frantically in the dwelling which still had all its furnishings from the wheel to the hollowed-out coconut in which she slept and her water bottle along with all the wood shavings. When he couldn’t find her, he started pawing at the glass and did that on two sides of the tank. He has always felt these creatures were his and defends them mightily from the cats who want to eat them.
But what was amazing about all this was how he somehow knew we were talking about the mother gerbil, and not just any of them, this one in particular. How in the world did he know? Did he recognize her name? Did he sense something ominous in Barb’s voice? It was scary how he figured it out instantly and it was touching how upset he seemed to be that she was gone. She had been a big part of his life and he’ll miss her.
So will we humans.
©2013 Jim Hagarty
