For the past three and a half years, I’ve had gerbils. This results from my old Seattle apartment being pet-free. I wanted something to cuddle and enjoy, so I got gerbils. For a time — a short time — I had two. Two boys: Jack and Ennis. It turns out that I was only half correct. Eight healthy babies and a name change (Ennis to Enid) later, I had ten. Then sixteen. Then more. Some of the offspring were relatively unusual colors (albino, honey, partial albino, etc.), but most were the standard dark brown ticked.

All told, Jack and Enid — and their progeny — made something like two dozen gerbils, over the course of about two and a half years. Some were given away, but the majority of them stayed with me.

A few nights ago, the last of my female gerbils died. I knew it wasn’t long for her for a number of reasons, not the least of which was her age. Moreover, her friend/sister/aunt/roommate/I’m-not-sure-what had died a few weeks ago, and gerbils don’t do well on their own. They’re social animals. She’d also had a stroke a few months ago. They can carry on for quite some time after a stroke, but a stroke pretty obviously shortens their life.

When she died, that left me with three boys. Two are the standard brown, one is albino. The two brown guys dislike the albino. And honestly, I can understand why. The albino gerbils (in my experience, anyhow) tend to be nippier and less friendly. They’ve bickered in the past, once to the point of bloodying the albino. And the other night, they did so again. For the past two nights, instead of getting to cuddle in the ger-pile, the albino has slept on the exercise wheel, all by himself. It’s the saddest thing you have ever seen. The two brown boys, huddled up with one another, and the albino, with blood stains on his fur, excluded and eating his lunch alone on the playground.

So I’ve separated them. I’ve arranged their tanks such that they share a common wall, so they can have maximum security prison-style visits. But, unfortunately, I think the two brown boys are going to kill the albino if I leave them together.

There’s probably an Israel/Palestine joke to be made here, but that’s not really a funny situation, so I won’t.