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Gerbil Dreams

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So I lost my third pet today within a month. Makes me question my animal handling abilities. My very personable algae eater died after a bust randomly fell off of a shelf into the fish tank. My rat girl had to be put down on Dec 19th, the day after Killian's birthday , though we knew that was coming due to her out of control tumors. She very suddenly stopped eating, so we took her in to the vet's the next morning to be put down. It was a bit more stressful than it should have been because we were told that we could be present as she went under, which wasn't true. I had called around specifically for that because it is a big deal to me. Killian said the person apologized for misinforming us, but I wasn't mad with her at all, it just made the whole thing harder to deal with. We stopped by Killian's old house and buried rat girl next to her sister who also was ravaged by tumors.

My Christmas present was a new gerbil, and I usually don't get overly attached to gerbils, but this one instantly grabbed me. He had a white vest and tail tip and the darkest deer eyes I've seen. He was extremely active, and yet incredibly tame and sweet. We just got back from visiting my brother's, and I went to check on him this morning. He was a ruffled ball in the corner which was odd, and he just sat there limp in my hands. Killian stayed as long as he could, but he had to go to his second day of his new job (and my job doesn't start for another two weeks, so things are tight). I tried making the gerbil comfortable and went to look up gerbil diseases. Nothing really fit his symptoms as he would lie limp, then wobbly take off at a run before going limp again. He didn't have any diarrhea, labored breathing, or anything that said respiratory infection or other common ailments. When I went back to check on him, his ears were folded back and he looked and felt dead, completely cold as ice. I managed to warm him back up with rice socks, though it looked like he was having tiny seizures. He was actually looking pretty active and normal after a couple of times changing the rice socks every 20 minutes, which got my hopes up. By the time Killian got home though, it was clear that he was having some sort of brain damage related trouble as he would have a couple of seconds of hyperactivity before completely freezing and responding to neither touch nor sound. Killian comes home when the vet's close up, so we couldn't bring him in to be put down (not like we could even afford that right now being between jobs). When we checked on him during our gerbil watch, we found him with pools of blood coming from his ears with no sign of scratches. I'm almost positive he had some sort of tumor or brain aneurysm.

I don't know, things in general haven't been going great, and this was just the cherry on the shit sundae. I'm really thankful I have Killian as a stoic tree that I can always rely on. Both people I love and strangers have been wounding me deeply, sometimes personally, and sometimes through their general behavior. For instance, we caught up with a coworker a few days ago, and he joined us in quitting the gated community guardhouse gig. Because he did his job, which seems to tick them off more than when you don't, a resident (these people are millionaires to billionaires) called him up and called him both a nigger and a monkey. I don't doubt that for a second since their incredibly rude, racist behavior, and complete inability to recognize others and humans led us to quit in the first place, along with a friend and our boss (an ex cop who has dealt with the scum of the Earth and couldn't stand these people). I definitely know what the best Christmas present would be, though I thought it'd be the gerbil. Be nice to people. Seriously. Start treating others as if they were your family or yourself. I don't mean be a placid sheep or sappy, but use your actions to build up those around you, even if you do so secretly. I know that will be my New Year's resolution.
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Animales09's avatar

The photo looks like 100% of my gerbil Chip