Sweetie, Part II

And so I set off on my deceptive quest, one you can probably already guess was destined to fail.

Finding a brown female gerbil sounds easy, but in fact, it was a bit of a challenge. PetsMart north, nearest my house, stocks males only; PetsMart south has the females. Are gerbils really so prolific that they must be separated by not just glass, but 8 miles of interstate? Or is this practice really more about the confidence PetsMart has in its employees' ability to see the subtle differences in rodent genitalia?

Whatever the reason, let it be a tip for you future gerbil owners. Coed gerbil housing is prohibited at PetsMart. (I suspect the same is true of those sexually insatiable hamsters.)

I trekked down south and discovered there were no brown female gerbils. A new shipment was expected Wednesday. My son returned on Thursday.

Wednesday, I hurried back on my lunch hour and found a regular smorgasbord of brown female gerbils. One of them was the exact same shade as Sweetie. The look was perfect, but temperament was equally critical. Sweetie had been, well, sweet. Unusually so.

I held my potential new housemate in my hands. She snuggled down into them, and when I closed them over her, bumped against my fingers with her nose. Just as Sweetie had done. When I opened my fingers, she stayed still. Calm, just like Sweetie.

"I'll take this one," I said, and breathed a sigh of relief. This was going to work exactly as I'd planned.

Back home, I slipped the little critter into her cage. She sat perfectly still for a moment, then started jumping around the cage like a creature possessed, leaping for the top, desperate to be free. This was bad; Sweetie had displayed no such restlessness. I reached in to touch her, certain this would calm her down. Instead, she freaked. She ran from my hand, plunging into a colorful plastic pipe through which the creatures were supposed to crawl. She stayed inside it, breathing hard, eyes wild. When I curled a finger inside to touch her, she streaked out of the pipe and began again running wildly around the cage. I recognized the symptoms. Clearly, she was manic.

I told myself she was just nervous about her new surroundings and called it a night. But she was unchanged when the sun rose, and I realized Robby would never be fooled by this jittery excuse for a substitute.

I had only a few hours left now, but there was still time to return her and get another one, I thought. PetsMart had a two-day return policy designed for just such animal personality quirks. I reached in to retrieve her, the pet store box at the ready.

She ran, dodged, twisted and repeatedly slipped out of my grasp. I grew exasperated. She wedged herself into the pipe again, breathing hard, and I saw my chance. Her tail was sticking out. I grabbed it and pulled. She did not come out. Instead, the hair on her tail shucked off cleanly, leaving a long, thin, bloody bone protruding from her behind.

I stood there in shock, holding the bit of fluff in my hand. I couldn't tell if the gerbil was hurt; she looked every bit as freaked out as she had 30 seconds ago. But I knew it had to have caused her pain, and freak or not, she didn't deserve it.

The tail, however, was not going back on. After a short round of chase, I finally caught her, and closed her into the box. I stared at the furry sheath for a second, wondering if I should take it back, too, but threw it into Robby's trash can instead.

The PetsMart people took her back, but I did not imagine the cold stare the clerk gave me. "Never pick a gerbil up by its tail," she said. "That's in all the books."

I didn't ask to see another gerbil. The gig was up. My plan to spare Robby early heartache had failed miserably.

I met his dad for our weekly pickup at yet another PetsMart that evening. This was only partially planned; we often met there since it was almost exactly halfway between our homes.

Robby jumped into the car beaming. "I can't wait to see Sweetie," he said. "Let's go."

Instead, I broke the news to him. It was a sharply edited version, minus George, minus the toilet, minus the frantic search, minus the crazed clone and minus the bloody tail. I told him only that she had died, but I didn't know how. His small face fell, and he turned away from me for a minute.

"Listen," I said. "I had an idea. If you want to, we can go right in to PetsMart and get you a new one. In fact, I think we should get two. I've read that they get lonely."

I'd read a lot about gerbils that afternoon.

Finally, Robby turned to me and nodded sadly. By the time we got to the gerbil display, he was smiling in anticipation of his two new pets.

Later that weekend, Robby came downstairs holding something tightly in his fist.

"Mom," he said, opening his hand, "I think I know why Sweetie died."

In his palm was the furry tail fragment.

"It looks like her tail came off somehow," he said. "I think that's what killed her."

I nodded solemnly. "You might be right," I said.

He placed it gently into my hand. "Can you find a place for this and save it? I want to remember Sweetie forever."

The tail has since been lost, or perhaps Robby agreed to throw it away; I can't recall. But I don't need it to remember her. The tale of Sweetie is etched forever in my mind.