First thing first, as you read this post, do not think me cold hearted to make light of the events of last night. This is the only way I know to share my guilt.
As I put my daughters to bed last night I decided to check on our pet Guinea Pig, Foddy. (If you wonder about the odd name, lets just say that 4 year olds come up with some odd names if the power is left solely to them.) My daughter has done a very good job feeding and checking her water for the last two and a half years since Foddy joined our family. My role has always been to change her cage and just to double check that she has water. As I approached her cage my mind noted, as it had the previous night, that it was odd that her cage hadn't started to stink as much as normal. I had cleaned it early last week and normally it would be starting to smell by now.
As I lifted the lid I saw her laying on her side. My first reaction was, "wow, I've never seen her sleep before" but even before that thought was completed my epiphny struck and I let out an "Uh-oh". As soon as it came out of my mouth, I tried to pull it back. From my daughter's bed I heard, "what's uh-oh dad, is something wrong with Foddy?" Not knowing what to do I grabbed the cage and told her to go to sleep.
Upon investigating it became clear she was not just sick and had in fact been dead for quite some time. There was very little "waste" in the bedding, only a little of the food was gone and it didn't look like she had drank anything... She was cold and stiff. Rather than put off the inevitable, we wrapped her in a towel and took her back to my daughter to tell her. Our first attempt to explain went amiss when we just said that Foddy had "gotten sick". My little girl replied with "What can we do to help her? Take her to the animal doctor?" When we tried to regroup and delayed in our answer, she was perseptive enough to ask "Is she dead?"
We then told our sons what had happened. They took consolation in knowing that Foddy would now be able to play with Twinkle Toes, our pet ferret that died in the spring. Then I was taken quite off guard as both of my older two wanted to know what pet we would get next and started to explain to us what we needed for a fish tank. To see a six year old, with read eyes, still gulping air recovering after crying, explain that you need "a glass tank, some pretty rocks, or sand, and some fake plants, and water, and ..." I didn't know to laugh or cry!
We put them to bed and went back downstairs to the cage. Then I made the discovery that ripped my heart in two. The ball in her water bottle was jammed up the tube and wouldn't dispense any water! With one squeeze I freed it and water dripped into the corner of the cage. She had dug almost every scrap of bedding out of that corner of the cage and her head was laying under the water bottle when I found her. Indeed, when I cleaned her cage, and refilled her water bottle, I sealed her fate. Both my wife and I had checked on the water bottle throughout the week but both of us assumed the other had topped it off for her, not questioning why it was staying full. To add to the guilt, one of my first thoughts had been "great! no more cages to clean".
To echo a theme from the McBlunder post a few back, please don't tell my daughter what I did to her Foddy. With all this parental guilt she is going to make out just fine, she can have a whole school of fish if she plays her cards right!
