Checkers, the second gerbil, died tonight, almost a month to the day after her buddy.

I don't think it was coincidence that they died so close together. I think she died of loneliness, of tiny gerbil heartbreak.

After her partner died, I thought Checkers, no longer competing for food, would grow fat. Instead, she wasted away.

About a week ago, I reached in to pick her up and grasped a body more bones and fur than substance. I could see a deep indentation between her hip bone and stomach. She was more warm than cool, but just barely, sort of like I'd removed her from the refrigerator. I set her on the floor to stretch her little legs - the two of them had always gone wild at this burst of freedom - and though she explored, her gait was dramatically altered. There was no leaping about, dashing behind the dresser, clever evasion when my hand neared to return her to the cage. Her gait was wobbly and though not exactly slow, remarkably less brisk than before.

While Robby had always preferred Romante, named after a superhero on some storybook CD we'd rented, I'd always liked Checkers a bit more. She was the worker, the industrious little homebody who attacked the frequent toilet paper rolls we'd throw in and gnaw them to nothingness. She never ceased digging more and deeper tunnels in their glass aquarium. And obviously, she either didn't eat much or burned it all off during her endless housekeeping.

Romante did his share of scurrying as well, but I could never that she made any sort of, you know, contribution. Although they were both females, I thought of him as the male. Pleasant - and with a bit of a paunch - but leaving the tedious work up to his mate.

Now, two toilet paper rolls lay inside the cage, one intact, one only partially nibbled on by her little teeth.

Checkers was dying. I wanted to put her out of her misery, but I could not bring myself to do it.

Growing up on a farm, my father killed critters with a fair amount of regularity, something I didn't learn until I was into my double digits. Too many cats breeds distemper, so my dad controlled the population. Farm cats weren't put to sleep. Vets were expensive, and reserved for the money making cattle, if at all. Kittens were dispensed of by methods far more primitive than most of my friends can understand. In my dad's case, he threw them quickly against a hard surface, usually the silo.

An ugly visual, I know, but it's not that my dad was heartless. Warding off disease was part of the business of farming, and trust me, farmers far and wide did this - and probably still do today. It took me more than two decades of my life to understand this, and still, the memory of the kittens who mysteriously went missing and the fate I later knew befell them, lingers.

I only recently found a co-worker whose father did the same. She stared at me incredulously when I shared my story. "Oh my God!," she said. "I've finally found someone else. No one understands." We're thinking of forming a support group.

At any rate, I knew how to do it. Swiftly and with minimal pain. I knew it would be a mercy killing. But I hoped instead she would simply expire on her own.

Last night, I peered in the cage and saw no Checkers. The entrances to the tunnels she'd created were all blocked with hay. I was certain she had crawled into a dark spot, pulled the hay down around the entrance, and died. I even thought the symbolism of the closed doors, the small gerbil thought she'd put into it, was kind of poetic.

Feeling a sense of relief, I gently raked a stick through the bedding, expecting to unbury her body. Instead, a head poked up through the hay and a pink nose twitched. She burrowed out, made an ambitious circle of the cage and took a long drink of water. That she was interested in the water made me hesitate, yet again, about expediting her death. If she still yearned for water, she still must feel some thirst for life, I thought.

Tonight, I opened the cage and searched for her again. I picked up the fake tree root and her curled body rolled out from under it.

I felt a shock run through to my toes. It was exactly what I'd expected to find for days, yet I was stunned by the sight. I picked her up. Her body was not stiff, but limp. It was not cold, but cool. Her eyes were tighly shut, her mouth hung slightly open. She was dead. Recently dead, but dead, I thought.

I carried her outside to the Dumpster, looked at her tiny face, and stroked her brown-and-white head. It lollled to one side. Unexpectedly, tears fell. I told her I was sorry, and before I lifted the lid, touched her riibs one last time to make sure she wasn't breathing. Ever so slightly, her body moved.

It was clear now what I had to do. The tears making the whole scene blurry, I threw her to the pavement as hard as I could. When I picked her little body up, it felt - if possible - heavier. I let her fall gently from my hand into the Dumpster.

When Romante died, Robby said he was done with gerbils, and that after Checkers died, he wanted no more. Still, I have to tell him. Still his face will crumple again and his own little heart will break just a bit.

I will tell him what may sound to those far from childhood like a fairy tale. Though some might say gerbils and other animals have no emotions, I believe Checkers and Romante loved one another. So much so, they left the world on one another's delicate heels.