February 2, 2007

prognosticator of prognosticators

when i was a kid, my family had a hamster. apparently we started out with a hamster and a gerbil, but the gerbil chewed away most of the insides of the yellow plastic habitrail (doing unspeakable damage to the large exercise wheel) and we couldn't keep her. i want to say she also chewed on her roommate, but don't quote me on that.

regardless, there was only one gerbil and i don't remember her name.

but! the hamster's name was mark. i remember because ...

the next hamster's name was mark. and ...

the next hamster's name was mark. and ...

his successor was also named mark.

this could go on another four or five times as the succession of mark was a long one. i don't know for sure how many there were because i was just little and suffered a short time from injuries sustained after being pushed down the stairs ... but that's a story for another day.

the point, if you haven't yet guessed, is that we had lots of hamsters named mark. if we'd taken any pictures of them, you'd never be able to tell which was which. yes, they were that identical.

that's the beauty of rodents.

i wonder how many punxsutawney phil's there have been.


[note: we also had goldfish named merrill, lynch, pierce, fenner, and smith]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I cant belive we've known a Marc all these years and you've never once likened him to your past rodents :)

Anonymous said...

actually, there were 2 -- marc and florence, named after your great aunt and uncle from cleveland. and they did get replaced, now and then. i think aaron liked them. i never had any use for them. aaron - rodents - reptiles - it fits.