Family Daze

Nibbles, the rat, came home and stayed for the weekend

By Debbie Farmer

My daughter was excited when her teacher asked her to take home the classroom pet, a gray rat named Nibbles, for the weekend.

"Don't worry," the teacher said. "They're hardy rodents and easy to take care of. Anyone can do it." Apparently she didn't know what I did to houseplants. "They need to be played with frequently because of their high intelligence," she said. "And they eat almost anything that's fresh and wholesome like brown rice, barley grains, whole-wheat pasta, and fresh cooked liver."

My daughter looked worried.

"But rodent mix will be OK, too," she continued. "Nibbles will have a great time and this will be a wonderful experience."

I just hoped he'd survive until Monday.

As soon as we got home my daughter took Nibbles into the house to show her little brother. I unloaded his supplies from the car: a box of gerbil food, fresh cedar chips and a brown bag filled with Barbie clothes. I figured I either picked up the wrong bag or Nibbles had a better social life than me.

Within the first hour my children cleaned his cage and gave him fresh food three times. At bedtime they insisted on reading him a story. We left his cage downstairs and wished him goodnight. I marveled at what a nice, low-maintenance pet Nibbles turned out to be. Maybe this would be a wonderful experience after all.

A half an hour later I was awakened by a whirring sound coming from the living room, as if several power tools were sawing through my furniture. I ran downstairs and found Nibbles spinning in his metal wheel, stopping to throw his food around and running around in circles--actions that usually only happen in my kitchen during mealtimes. I returned to my room, but I could still hear the metal wheel scraping on the sides of the cage.

It stopped just as I was drifting off to sleep and I began to wonder why it was so quiet. "He could be eating," I thought as I closed my eyes. "But what if he's hurt? What if he was knocked unconscious while jumping out of his wheel? What if he's lying on the bottom of his cage, his legs broken, unable to crawl to his water bottle for a life-saving sip of moisture?"

I got out of bed and raced downstairs, wondering how difficult it would be to find an identical rat at the local pet store. I turned on the lamp and stared at Nibbles who was happily eating his gerbil mix. I left the lights on and lie down on the sofa.

The next morning my children raced downstairs to wake up Nibbles while I tried to open my eyes wide enough to find the coffee pot.

They played with him for a whole five minutes before wandering away to watch cartoons. I didn't want Nibbles to get depressed or neurotic before Monday, so I spent the morning making a climbing structure for his cage out of a cardboard shoebox. He seemed listless at lunchtime so I made him a pot of brown whole-grain rice, then carried him around the house on my shoulders.

On Sunday morning my children waved as they passed Nibbles' cage on their way to the kitchen. I tried to cheer him up by taking him to the park to visit the squirrels, then creating a ramp in his cage that rivaled the L.A. freeway system. By nighttime I was exhausted, but Nibbles was alive and happy. He only had to survive the night and I was home free.

"What's that smell?" My daughter held her nose and fanned the air with her other hand.

"Nibbles."

"Who?"

"The rat you brought home for the weekend. Who's going to clean his cage?"

My children looked at me as if I had asked them to put on galoshes and clean out the lion cages at the zoo with a sand shovel, so I just cleaned the cage myself.

The next morning I barely woke up in time to drive my daughter to school. As I shuffled down the hallway toward her classroom, I passed a woman wearing a robe and slippers with dark bags underneath her eyes.

"Buster Brown the Guinea Pig," she held out a wire cage. "And you?"

"Nibbles the Rat."

She nodded and pointed to an agitated woman with matted hair gazing wildly at the ground. "That's the PTA president. She had the classroom bunny for two weekends in a row."

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