and  other small mammals.  I taught Kindergarten with fish in an aquarium, a turtle, a hedgehog, a free roaming hare, as well as two gerbils.  The gerbils slept all day.  The whole school day was their snooze time.  But, at night I realized that they knew how to open the top of their cage and scamper around.

I never worried about them, but I put a large rock on top of their cage to hold the lid down.  These were special gerbils, I discovered.  The rock was rolled off at night and the religious overtones of this feat did not fail me.  One super cold mid-winter morning I opened the door to the store-room to hang up my coat.  As soon as the door opened I was covered from head to toe in white styrofoam beads.  Some business or other had donated these pellets for the kids to use in art projects.

I went to my fellow Kindergarten teacher’s room and  I wrote her a big warning and taped it to the door of our shared store-room.  “DANGER GERBILS ON LOOSE IN STORE ROOM AND STYROFOAM BEADS.  SHARON”  I tried my best to shake those little white beads from my head to my toes.  It was impossible without a vacuum.  Fellow teachers  came in to work and they saw me and one laughed louder than the others.  She had gone out with her husband that past Saturday night, leaving their German Shepherd dog at home.  The dog was bored, so had taken on their bean bag chairs which were so popular at the time.  When they came home their dog, their own bodies, and all other areas in their love nest were covered in styrofoam pellets.

My students came in from the bus.  They thought it was just a fun thing about school.  I taught that morning, eager for lunch break.  I went into the store-room and grabbed the massive plastic bag of static electric beads and saw the hole where the gerbils had chewed their way into mayhem.  I opened it and dived in.  Gerbils are fast, but I was faster that day.  The first one squirmed in my grip and the second one bit me several times.  I was happy to see that they were covered in the annoying styrofoam beads.  I put them back into their cage and the kids gathered around to see the funny little animals.

I put the lid on the top of the cage and asked the kids to find all heavy things to stack on the lid of the cage.  Some brought boxes of crayons, and others brought string, glue, tape, and then came in the wood blocks.  I put the large rock back on the cage top and all things Kindergarten went on top as well.  That night I went home with the two gerbils, their cage, the lid to the cage and the large rock.  It took me a week to clean the store-room, the gerbils, and myself.  The gerbils did not care for their bath.  I was bitten a few more times.

My husband and I each took a gerbil in a pocket that next weekend.  We were like bandits, only we were giving not taking.  The pet store where I had purchased the little bastards suddenly had an increase in their gerbil population.  I also brought the rock and set it on the shelf next to the cage. We both sang “Hallelujah” on the way home.