CHARLIE DIPODOMYS

Once upon a time there was a young woman (note: I did not use the term "lady" due to the suspicion that I never was a Lady.) who attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
She met and fell in love with a young man who was a psychology major. (Actually he was a chemistry major when she met him, but he was doing so poorly in p-chem that he changed his major.)(Or maybe it was Inorganic Chem.)(That was the year they met, and the year the young woman took 14 hours of classes and failed 7 hours and was asked to leave Modern Dance before she failed that as well.) (Well there were a lot of parties and a lot of time spent in the Student Union instead of class.)

Anyway one day in the Pysch building a student rushed past them carrying a flower pot with his hand over the top. The woman asked what it was and was told it was a Kangaroo Rat they had tried to use in an experiment gone bad and now they didn't want the rat and he was nasty and unfriendly and so they were going to flush him (or her-- who could get close enough to tell) down the Loo.

AAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

So the young woman said oh no no I'll take him! And so we (me and the young man who is now my spouse) became the proud owners of one Kangaroo Rat, one HUGE cage with about 6" of sand in the bottom, a flowerpot, and a bag of sunflower seeds.

Meet Charlie Dipodomys.

Unfortunately the young woman lived in the dorm where Kangaroo Rats were not allowed. So John took all the stuff and moved Charlie into his kitchen in his off-campus rooms.

And here he became a problem child. Charlie, we learned, was nocturnal. And angry. He was a very, very angry Dipodomys.

At night he clung to wire on the cage and gnawed, and gnawed and gnawed and scrambled around to find another spot to attack. He dug in the sand for we did not know he was burrowing creature. He buried the sunflower seeds and he HATED us. He was so cute but touching him was simply out of the question.

Thus, at the end of the semester with summer looming, came the problem as to what to do with Charlie Dipodomys. Hardly a pet, he could not go home with John and so I said I would take him. I called home to arrange transport and mentioned to my Father about Charlie. His response was extremely negative. I asked what I should do and he said "Flush him."

AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Charlie Dipodomys, aside from his undying nastiness, was notable for one more thing. He was responsible for the only time in my life that I hung up on my Father.

Click.

Dad called back. He was laughing. (Thank God.) He said

"Ok, Marlin Perkins, bring him along, but we are donating him to the children's zoo."

For those of you who are too young, Marlin Perkins was the host of Mutual of Omaha's very popular television show "Wild Kingdom" and someone I desperately admired.

Thus it was that Charlie Dipodomys moved from a looming death by toilet to the spacious cage at the Blank Children's Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa, where he had a place to burrow and no longer had to live in a flower pot, and where he probably ate something better than just sunflower seeds. I went to visit him once but he was just as unyieldingly ungracious as he had always been.

He was such a cute little bastard.