Although there have been times when my bed has been my sofa and times when my sofa has been my bed, I've always had at least one touchstone. Somewhere that recalls a primal, bone memory of cave or hole where I, or the thousand thousand bits of others that make up me, rested and fed, warm and relaxed after the hunt and the harvest.
Imagine I never had. Imagine I had never curled under a heavy duvet, rootling a down pillow into a head-sized brain nest. Imagine I'd never tucked my feet under my bum just about exactly in my corner of the sofa where my feet are tucked up under my bum right now.
And then imagine that all of a suddenly I was given both.
Today we went on a fair to moderate quest, at the end of which lay a hard choice for our Mol. There were four alert, interested, lively and engaging young men, only two of which she could bring home. Coins were tossed, conversations held in corners, walks taken to clear minds, more coins. Eyes were checked for brightness, gonads checked for gender.
She thought, we discussed, she thought some more. Finally she made her choice and carried her two young men home. During the journey noses and whiskers appeared at small holes. In a silent, friendly, confidential gerbilspeak, a silver young gentleman with a white patch on his head introduced himself to her as Harvey, his reddy brown companion with the biggest, blackest eyes you ever did see, as Ron.
They came from the petshop, they knew, and a breeder beforehand. A series of cages with a couple of centimetres of sawdust to kick around in. What they didn't realise until the second we gently introduced them into their new gerbilarium, with its deep, warm substrate and subterranean tunnel, was that they or the thousand, thousand gerbils that make up them, come from the desert. And that they burrow.
Be patient, Mol; be patient, camera. You'll see them some more tomorrow. They have a tunnel, and it's home.
No comments:
Post a Comment