Pet peeves

I’ve always said that small pets are a great way to introduce children to the concept of death. Hamsters do not live very long, and our youngest daughter got through three of them before the age of 10.

I was prepared for the demise of Stanley, hamster number 1, and had saved a pretty box that Bella could use as a coffin. The day after he died a new garden help, Nancy, came to our house for the first time – and no doubt thought us even more eccentric than we thought her (she pushed her tools in a corduroy pram) when I said her first job was to dig a hamster grave.

After school - sitting at the burial site with Bella, then seven, who, for effect, held a pink umbrella over her while she read a poem about hamsters, tears pouring down her cheeks – I found that, to my shame, I could barely contain my giggles.

When she was 10 we gave up on hamsters and got Bella a rabbit – Benny – who has lived in her bedroom ever since. Now nearly seven years old and looking quite ancient, with cataracts, we are all on edge.

So it was with some anxiety that I read the following text late last Friday night, when Steve and I had just driven three hours to Devon...

“I was just checking Benny’s bottom - I think he has worms or maggots... I looked up the symptoms yesterday and it looks like something is eating away at him and there were things inside – also his tummy keeps making noises and I’ve noticed a lot of little flies in my room...”

On the phone she added that she has spotted a hole or two into Benny, with things coming out of them. She was sure Benny had fly strike - and her friend Ellen’s rabbit died of it.

Why didn’t you tell us all this before we set off to Devon?!

I was puzzled by the news, though, thinking that he was fine – with no signs of flies – when I was looking after him a few days before.

Steve and I tried to imagine how Bella would cope taking Benny to the vet without us to comfort her if it was very bad news. We hatched a plan that involved calling on Granny for a taxi service. Which brought another disturbing scene into my mind – one of Granny telling the vet she never liked Benny anyway and it wouldn’t be worth saving him at this late stage of his life. “It’ll be much kinder to let him die,” I imagined her telling a sobbing, shaking Bella.

Overnight I woke a few times, worrying about this scenario, and the end of Benny.

Then, first thing, I checked my phone and saw a text that had come in after we’d gone to bed:

“I don’t need to go to the vet’s after all – I was looking it up and the worms are really just waxy stuff clogging up his sensory glands either side of his willy – those are the things that I thought were holes. Haha. I’ve cleaned him up and he’s fine now...”

Haha indeed.

Vive Benny!