The Ashley Files: The Gerbil Story

I'm not totally sure what spurred this memory, but this is a story that needs to be told.

Over the years, I've had a lot of random jobs. It started when I was young and glued pictures for bridge reports (my family's version of "working with the family business). I had a job at Subway one summer (easily my least-favorite job), was a bridge inspection field technician with the family business, worked in a church camp kitchen, and was a lab assistant. The summer I started this blog, I was working at the school's day care.

It was my second summer there. The job was certainly not what I was hoping to do the rest of my life -- but for a nineteen-year-old it was decent money and okay hours. And hey, a couple times a week I got to hang out at the pool and get paid for it. Not a bad gig.

[My dad also referred to it as the "world's best birth control" and he may have been right.]

I don't remember a lot of the ins and outs of that summer -- most days passed without too much incident. However, there was one day that lives on in my memory as the most tragic, hilarious afternoon ever known in that day care.

There were three of us "teachers" left. The day was winding down and a few parents had been by to pick up their kids, so when one of the kids asked if they could take out one of the class pets (a hamster named Lightning) we agreed.

There was a second pet, a mean-spirited gerbil named Thunder that was to remain in his cage. However, despite this lone rule, little Timmy (who tended to do whatever he wanted anyway) decided to take Thunder out as well.

My coworker wandered over to where I was helping another kid with an art project. "Timmy took Thunder out, too. Should we tell them to put the pets away?"

"Well, that was the only rule, so yeah, the pets need to go back."

She corralled the hamster back to his cage -- and then there was a shriek and a general scuffle.

I turned back to the crowd to see six kids diving for ... something. After about ten seconds of this, as said coworker and I waded into the crowd of rugrats, there was another squeal and some screams and the crowd parted.

There was Thunder, sprawled on the floor, doing death spasms in a growing pool of his own gerbil blood.

Crap.

Mayhem. We order the kids back to a table and I scoop up the kid screaming the hardest (a six-year-old we'll call "Callie") and head for the door. A third coworker had been in the room across the hall and heard the commotion; as she walked in, I pointed her toward the quickly-expiring rodent and take poor, hysterical Callie down the hall toward a quiet spot in the building.

After a couple minutes of rocking her, I finally ask, "What happened?"

She takes a deep breath and sobs, "I STEPPED ON HIM!!!"

Oh. Dear. Lord.

One of the older girls appears a minute later and, breathless, explained. Apparently Thunder had bit Timmy, who promptly dropped the rodent. He had been the first shriek. Then came the chase, at which point Callie -- sweet, innocent little Callie, one of the smallest and youngest in the crowd -- got pushed in the fray and ... well, stepped on Thunder's tiny gerbil head.

Which meant that I was now sitting with the most traumatized little girl I had ever known. She had killed the class pet.

For the next half hour, I sat in that room with Callie, trying to let her know that accidents happened and that it would all work out okay. She calmed down enough to not scream -- although the tears didn't stop before her mom got there to take her home.

Lucky for me, Callie's mom had already been briefed and showed up ready to take over. Even better, I didn't need to replay the whole thing in front of the little girl. I gratefully hand her to her mother and head back to the room.

Thunder was laid to rest somewhere on the school grounds, in a box Callie made herself. He was quickly replaced by a much friendlier gerbil (whose name I don’t remember, although it didn't go with "Lightning" as well), the summer continued without major incident ... and Timmy was never allowed near the class pets again.

The End