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The (Real) be yourself blog
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The (Real) be yourself blog
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As I've mentioned before, my parents bought a pet store when I was a kid. I think they expected it to be hard work, fun, and an exciting way to see people happy with buying pets and stuff. From what they say today, they found it to be much harder than hard work, a nearly 24/7 job, and much crazier than anticipated. People were happy to come and hold puppies, kittens and talking parrots. Not all of those people bought anything. The ones that did were sometimes demanding and fussy.
Gerbils were a popular pet for kids and many people came in to purchase a gerbil, hamster or another small pet as a first animal for a child. (Check out the video below to see a little girl demonstrating taming gerbils.) Not everything went that smoothly... Quite a number of parents thought that their children would find a gerbil an easy pet. Once a day feeding and watering should be pretty simple. Parents didn't always realize that children have little concept of time and that there are other icky tasks like cleaning up pee-soaked wood shavings and poop-filled food dishes. Some parents were back in the store within a day or two because they found the gerbil deceased and wanted to replace it before the child found out. Other parents were back demanding to know why the gerbil died and insisting that our gerbils were sick and should be able to live for three or four days without attention. (Sigh...) We often had to go for a run to purchase more hamsters and gerbils since those were popular and sold out quickly. The store was open from morning until evening 6 days a week and the animals had to be fed multiple times a day, so that left mostly nights free. My parents would sometimes bundle me into the back of our station wagon with a sleeping bag at bedtime and we would go on a nighttime jaunt to pick up animals or supplies at 7AM and be back at the store as soon as possible. There was one employee/friend who would open the shop but couldn't run it on her own for very long. One night we picked up gerbils from a private breeder in a rural area about two hours away. The gerbils were in small cardboard boxes and those were stacked in a large Styrofoam box at about 9PM. I was asleep while my Dad took a "shortcut" on dirt roads to get back before midnight. I was in a sleeping bag and the box of fun (gerbils) was in the back of the station wagon. I was rudely awakened by my mother screaming "Cow!!" Impact was next. I don't recall everything that happened, but I do remember the jolt when car and cow made impact. I remember the sound of the rear wagon door coming open and the horrible crunch of Styrofoam hitting the dirt road behind the car. My mother was asking if the cow was already, my Dad was screaming about the dents in the car and I realized gerbils were beginning to creep out of the broken box in the road. I hollered at my parents and we all began to grab for rodents in the dark. We managed to catch most of the escapees and patch the box up, though we were all emotional and upset about the poor creatures. The old station wagon still drove fine and I guess the cow got away just missing some hair, so we rattled up to the pet store at about one in the morning. My Dad carried the taped-up box of gerbils to the room where the cages were. I went to help him check the gerbils and I was really worried if any had been hurt or might be missing. At first count we seemed to have too many gerbils, though all seemed to be unscathed. Then we realized that one critter was a little bigger than the others and had some funny light colored strips in the coat. It was surprisingly gentle, perhaps due to sheer terror, so I placed it gently in a gerbil cage and studied it. My Mom came in to take a look. It seemed that we had inadvertently added some sort of little chipmunk-type thing to the box during our midnight road scramble. None of us were quite sure what to do with it, but my Dad and I took the cage out to the car and drove out to a cornfield. There was an abundance of food and water sources there, so we figured it was the best shot for the confused little guy. It probably fared better than the cow! "my mother screaming 'Cow!!'"
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AuthorMost of the good stuff about Maddie "Be Yourself" Gee is on the About page, but that page got out of hand. Don't go there. Maddie is an animal expert, a crazy person, and a writer. Full Disclosure - this blog does have Amazon affiliate links in it for products that Maddie likes. Your use of the Amazon links is greatly appreciated, but the intent is just to help keep things running and offer giveaways. You are welcome to search for the items elsewhere if you prefer it. Archives
January 2019
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