He was only seven at the time; He did not make the connection. It is the tail, of course, that gives the game away. He was an only child, so when he asked his parents could he have a pet, they agreed immediately. That Saturday, they travelled to the town and visited a pet shop. His parents assumed he would choose a hamster, a goldfish, or maybe even a budgie. Yet, when he spotted the two them in a cage; playfully burrowing away in the sand; his mind was immediately made up. He wanted a Meriones unguiculatus, a gerbil to you and me. He was too young to understand the glance his mother gave his father; or the shop owner’s attempt to sell them both gerbils, ‘They are social creatures. They need the company’. His mother was having none of it. ‘We can only afford one of them,’ she replied.
When they returned home, the ground rules were clearly laid out. The gerbil was his sole responsibility. It was to be named Alfie and was to be kept in its cage on a shelf in his bedroom. He was to feed it with seeds purchased from the pet shop. He was to provide it regularly with fresh water. He was to clean its cage weekly. Finally, under pain of an unspecified punishment, he was never, ever to allow the creature out of its cage. He loved Alfie; but he knows now that it would have been lonely and miserable on its own.
Every few months they would make a day trip to his mother’s parents’ home. On their first trip after Alfie’s arrival, he asked permission to bring the gerbil with them. His mother agreed but gave him strict instructions to leave the cage in the car when they arrived and not even mention Alfie’s existence to his grandmother. That afternoon, as was normal, he was left on his own as his parents went for a stroll around the farm with his grandmother and uncle Pat. Bored, he went out to the car and brought Alfie into the sitting room. All was quiet, so he opened the cage door and let the gerbil out to stretch its legs. Suddenly and unexpectedly, his grandmother appeared at the door, just in time to see Alfie’s tail disappear under a chair. ‘Pat, quick,’ she shouted, ‘a rat has got into the house’. Uncle Pat rushed into the room brandishing a poker. ‘It’s gone in under daddy’s chair,’ roared his grandmother. Pat violently pulled back the chair to reveal Alfie cowering in the corner.
As an adult, he can see the black comedy to this turn of events; but at the time he was distraught. All offers of a replacement pet; hamster, goldfish, budgie – there would be no more gerbils – were ungraciously refused. Yet now, as he peers into his own son’s pet cage, two hamsters rotating happily on their little wheel, he cannot help but feel a pang of relief at his son’s choice.