The story of Rocket and Snowball
ROCKET and Snowball were gerbils.
Not mice, not guinea pigs, but something small and furry in between.
They would clutch their morsels of food with tiny pink spindly fingers and their beady black eyes could stare straight into your soul. With each mini bite their wiry whiskers twitched. Melt. How adorable, until, it came to Rocket and Snowball’s pecking order. Snowball was a white Supremist. Bigger in size, permanently in charge; he ruled the cage. Rocket, despite her pacey name, was timid and shy, happy to follow Snow’s mandate.
They lived in a house of love with three children mostly on the second floor of their two-storey house but despite the mother’s dire warnings against the practice, the children frequently converted the upstairs playroom into a gerbil’s gymnasium, fencing off gaps under doorways with rolled up towels, to allow the pets to run free.
Inevitably Snowball saw his chance one day, thanks to the children’s poor workmanship which left a gap under the door a train could drive through, and he escaped.
Small people gave over-enthusiastic chase. Their thumping footsteps and shouts of “Catch him! Catch him!”, rattled Snowball’s inner-cage and he lost his cool, paying the ultimate price for freedom.
As he scurried off the upstairs landing into the arms of Nature’s betrayal - he could not fly –instead, he plummeted like a small but heavy stone, to the tiled floor in the entrance hall below. The odds for Snow’s survival were next to nil. The family rushed to his side. The room was silent. Snowball lay still. That kind of still brought on by the onset of only one condition. Tears in children’s eyes began to well. Quick on his feet, the Dad dashed to the kitchen and returned moments later with a tea towel – as a sort of makeshift gerbil ambulance – in which to wrap the mortal remains of Snow.
Children’s tears turned to sobs and someone whispered, ‘don’t go to the light, Snowball’.
The Dad gently pressed down on Snowball’s chest with his pointer finger and blew air on his little whiskered face. “Come on Snowball.” The family held its breath witnessing the miracle of the world’s first gerbil CPR. A little foot twitched. “Did you see that?!!” It twitched again. “He’s alive! He’s alive!” Snowball was resurrected that day, but the tables had turned for him and Rocket, and she ruled with an iron whisker from that day forward.
Such are the highs and lows of pet ownership. Welcome to Pet’s Month. See details inside.