An Accidental Mother (12 page)

Even more worrisome: If my job is to be a good parent, and I am creating a bad employee, should
I
be fired?

One weekend we went out to buy a hamster for Michael. Jim and I had decided that it was time for Michael to have his own pet. Michael, of course, had been asking us for a pet since he was five, although the requested animal has changed from frog to turtle to hamster and back again many times. Michael had a hamster in his classroom, and Jim had had hamsters as a child, so it was a unanimous decision that his first pet should be a hamster.

Elizabeth was staying with us for the weekend, so the lot of us loaded ourselves into the car at 10:00 on
Saturday morning. I was certain we'd be home within an hour, mission satisfactorily accomplished. However, amid a selection of other rodents, the pet store had only one hamster, and it was brown. Jim offered a chance to look elsewhere so Michael could at least have choices.

The second store did not have any regular hamsters but carried a smaller breed known as “dwarf” hamsters. We were immediately helped by an amiable young woman who within seconds asked if we had considered a guinea pig.

“They're bigger, calmer, easier for the children to hold,” she told us. “You can even walk them on a leash—see,” she pointed at a display rack. “It's like a harness. And they can live up to eight years.”

Michael stared at the display of harnesses with a look of glee on his face, and I, too, imagined how adorable it would be to walk down the street with a one-pound fur ball on the end of a leash. But the look of dismay on Jim's face reminded me of her last words; I was certain he was picturing Michael at the age of
sixteen, begging to borrow the car keys while the long-abandoned guinea pig (harness piled on the floor next to the cage) remained in his room alone.

Jim immediately shook his head and told the woman we were set on a hamster.

She nodded and reached into a nearby cage, pulling out a dwarf hamster. As she tried to hand it to Michael, the tiny thing was so wild and fast that it nearly escaped from her hands, and she ended up putting it right back into the cage. “They're young; they take some time to socialize,” she explained.

It was obvious that the dwarf hamster was too small and too fast for a small child to hold, so our search continued. We called two other stores to confirm that they had regular hamsters before we started our drive across town.

After a twenty-minute jaunt we entered store number three to find nothing but empty cages. I approached a young woman wearing a smock with the store logo. “We called. They said you had teddy-bear hamsters.”

She walked to the cages with me, noted that they
were empty, and then stated unapologetically, “Looks like we sold out.”

I turned to Jim; his frustration was more evident than mine. Back in the car I called a fourth store but this time asked them to check the cages. It was confirmed: they had a total of five hamsters! But today nothing would be easy. Instead of fifteen minutes to certain victory, we were stuck in a construction zone jammed with Saturday-afternoon traffic. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was complaining that the sun was coming in on her side of the car.

“I need something to drink!”

“We're almost there!” I tried to reassure her. “We'll get you something at the store.”

Michael remained silent, probably worried that any complaining could jeopardize the mission.

Shortly thereafter the four of us stood in front of a row of cages labeled “Teddy Bear Hamsters.” The holy grail of the day, they were filled with snuggling, furry creatures. As we all leaned closer to peer into the cages,
a friendly young girl named Jessica approached, offering her help.

“We'd like to buy a hamster.”

Jessica looked down at Michael and Elizabeth and, to our surprise, hesitated. Sorting through her key chain, she selected a key and stuck it into the lock of the hamster cage. She looked over at us and asked clearly, “You do know that hamsters bite, don't you?”

“Yeah, I had hamsters,” said Jim. “I was bitten once or twice.”

“I won't even pick them up by hand,” she replied. “Have you considered a rat?” She stuck her hand into the cage and scooped one of the hamsters into a small plastic container—obviously so she would not be
bitten
. Jim reached out and took the hamster from her, holding it in his big, manly hands while the creature squirmed and wiggled to get away.

Then Jessica began to educate us on the subject of rats. She explained that comparing domesticated rats to wild rats was like comparing a dog to a wolf. Rats,
we soon learned, are the smartest rodent of all (except perhaps for squirrels) and can even be taught to come when they are called. They can also be trained to do a variety of tricks and to play games such as hide-and-seek, and they can be litter trained. Soon the hamster was returned to its home and she was leading us to the rat cage. Reaching in with her bare hands, she pushed aside the pile of aspen shavings and picked up the lone gray baby rat.

“They don't bite,” she reminded us and, gently tipping up the rat's nose, ran her finger across his little rat lips and teeth to prove that she was telling the truth. She handed the rat to Michael, not Jim. “They don't bite, and they're very social.”

Soon we came to understand that the term “social,” when used in regard to rats, had two meanings. First, they are very friendly to people and will bond with humans in a manner much like a canine. Second, they are not happy being isolated; it is best to have more than one rat.

Michael looked up at us with his big blue eyes, and
I realized that he had been extraordinarily patient throughout the day. “Can I
please
have a rat?” he begged, his hands cupped around the small gray critter, whose nose and whiskers poked out between his fingers. The little black eyes seemed to look right at me, waiting along with Michael for my answer.

Not wanting the newest family member to be lonely, I turned to Jim. “And one for Elizabeth, too?”

“Okay,” he said.

You'd think that would have been the end of it, but remember, we'd driven fifteen miles to this store because it had plenty of
hamsters
, not rats. It seemed we were holding the only baby rat in the building. Jessica brought over a little carton and put the rat inside, handing it to Michael. We asked him to hold it carefully, and both children peeked through the tiny slats to make sure the rat was really in the box.

While Michael and Elizabeth wandered into the next aisle to pick out a rat house, we turned to Jessica. “Would you mind calling the store closest to our house? We were looking at hamsters there this morning,
but we'd like to make sure they have baby rats before we drive all the way back toward home.”

“Sure,” she replied. “But make sure you get another male.” She explained that a female rat can give birth to as many as twelve babies every twenty-five days. Unless we wanted our own breeding operation it was imperative that both rats be the same sex.

Five hours after having first left our house, we were back at the store where our day had started. The next rat would be Elizabeth's. Because Elizabeth was a six-year-old kindergartener obsessed with Barbies and Polly Pockets, whose favorite color was any shade of pink and who could list every single Disney princess in less than fifteen seconds, we (rightly or wrongly) lied to her by telling her she would be getting a girl rat. Jim pulled aside the employee about to help us pick out our second rat and asked if he would please refer to all of the males as “she.”

Back in the car, each child quietly peered into his or her own carton. Then Elizabeth announced that
she thought she saw a raisin in the bottom of her rat's box. Jim and I could barely contain our laughter.

The children spent the whole evening watching their rats. Elizabeth named hers Jasmine, after the Disney princess from
Aladdin
, and Michael named his George. Only Jim and I seemed to notice that Jasmine's testicles were bigger than George's.

The next morning we closed off the master bathroom and let the rats loose. While Michael and Elizabeth giggled, the rats ran under the cabinets and across the floor, climbed up the children's arms and down their backs, and jumped down again onto the travertine. From time to time, they would also leave a trail of … raisins.

All went well for the next three days. On the fourth Michael and I started our day to find Jas-mine lying on his stomach with his head down and one leg hanging loosely through the metal grid of the second level of the cage.

“Jasmine?” I asked, as though he could answer me. “Are you feeling okay?”

Elizabeth had returned to her mother's house after our weekend together, so it was only Michael who stepped over to take a look in the cage. “Maybe she's just tired,” he offered.

I reached in and took Jasmine out of the habitat; he lay unresponsive in my hand. I began to panic but tried to hide it from Michael. I set Jasmine down on the table, certain he would begin to wander, but instead he just flopped down and remained still.

“You should take her to the vet.”

Instinctively I thought, “That's not going to help.” But instead I said, “Maybe you're right, honey; maybe she's just tired. But if she doesn't seem better by the time I get home from work, I'll take her to the vet.” I placed Jasmine gently in the bottom of the cage, knowing this wasn't going to turn out well. “C'mon, let's go to the bus.”

Michael and I walked to the bus stop, and I tried to act normal. But once he was off to school I jogged
back to the house and into the family room, where I peered into the cage to see that Jasmine's eyes were closed and his body perfectly still.

“Oh, no,” I said out loud. “Oh, no!” I reached in to touch him, and his little body was stiff. I was already crying as I dialed Jim on the telephone.

“Hello.”

“Jasmine is
dead
!”

“What?”

“He's dead!”

I explained the short series of events, still in disbelief.

“Can you pick him up? Put him in a shoebox or something?”

“No!”

“Well, you've got to get him out of the cage. Is George okay?”

“Yes, he seems fine!”

“Let me call you back,” he said.

Jim was at work, Michael was on the bus halfway to school, and I was home alone with a dead rat. I needed to go to work, too, and there was nothing I could do
for Jasmine. But I didn't want to leave George alone with a dead cagemate. Armed with a shoebox and a paper towel, I stuck my hand back into the cage. I covered Jasmine with the paper towel and then picked him up, closing my eyes even though I couldn't see him. His whole body was stiff, and I was shocked that rigor mortis had occurred so quickly. I put the tiny body into the box and took it to the laundry room. I washed my hands (for a long time), dried my eyes, and headed off to work, my cell phone ringing as I went. It was Jim.

“I put him in a box.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. It was awful!”

“I'm sorry, honey.”

His sympathy made me begin to cry all over again. “Honey, we need to get a replacement.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a decoy. I'm all for kids learning about nature, but it's only been four days. I don't want them
to worry every morning when they wake up that their new pet might be dead or dying. It would be different if we'd had them for a few months—even a few weeks—but not four days.”

Jim never really said whether he agreed or not, but he promised to do as I asked. The pet store agreed to replace the rat, but they didn't have any with the same color pattern as Jasmine. Of course the solid-gray rat had survived, the one that would be easiest to replace without anyone knowing the difference. The one that had died had a white body and face and a black back. The closest Jim could get was a rat with similar coloring except with a black face instead of white.

When Jim brought Michael home from school, we avoided the cage or any discussion of the rats, not wanting to draw attention to them. It wasn't until long after dinner that Michael asked if we could take them out to play. All went well for the first ten minutes, and I actually believed we were in the clear.

But then he spoke: “Jasmine looks different.”

I continued to play with George, avoiding eye contact with Michael. “Really?”

“Yeah. Her face used to be white.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was white, and now it's black.”

“Oh, I don't know; she looks the same to me.”

Of course the moment Michael was in bed, I told Jim about his comments. “He didn't push the issue, so maybe he'll just let it drop.” I also told him that I wanted to take the rats with us on our planned weekend trip in our motor home. “I'm not going to leave home and spend the weekend fearful we're coming home to a dead rat—or rats.”