Guinea Pigs & Gerbils
A true-crime story about the worst thing I ever did.
Ned Pulaski and I were roommates my senior year in college. Not his senior year in college. He had dropped out of a different college and was living with me and two others friends in a house in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ned was short and wiry with short curly hair and a smile like he was getting away with something. We liked each other but we didn’t have a lot in common, so we would bond by committing crimes. Which we thought were hilarious, and when something’s hilarious, hey, how can it be wrong? Once we stole a huge generator from a construction site while it was running; Once we tried selling crack; But the worst thing we ever did was when we kidnapped the Tri-Delta Guinea Pig.
This was 1985 or ‘86. It’s three in the morning, and we’re staggering home drunk having closed some bar on King Street, when we approach, through no fault of our own, the Delta Delta Delta Sorority House on the corner of Bull St and Coming St. The Tri-Delts have three wooden triangles—Greek deltas—hanging from their eave tauntingly out over the street, so we try to jump up and steal them, but somehow the sorority girls cleverly made the deltas too high to be reached by two wasted morons jumping. So I declare there must be a ladder in the backyard, because we’re drunk, and we want there to be.
Most Charleston houses run sideways. One end is on the street with a false door leading between the street and a porch that runs the length of the house. The porch and house face the back wall of the house next door. And the house next door likely does the same. It’s like a series of upright pianos stored in a warehouse.
Let’s say there’s a knock and the Tri-Delt goes to to let in a visitor.
“Oh, I’ll just die if it’s not Chip coming to invite me to the Kappa Alpha annual War Between the States Cotillion,” she says. She steps out, turns left, walks the length of the porch, and opens the door to the street.
So getting to the backyard where I’m hoping to find a ladder would mean dashing through the side yard which is lit by floodlights and in view of any Tri-Delts looking out almost any window.
So Ned and I start prowling down the block. If we can find a way to cut in to where the all the backyards meet, we’ll be able to work our way along to the Tri-Delt house from behind. This part for me is blurry, but I know we made it to the backyards from somewhere, and I remember fences, trees, barking dogs, gardening sheds. We got lost and turned around. Then I remember a kiddie-wading pool and a tricycle. Finally, amazingly, we come up on the house from behind. There’s no ladder but better than any ladder, up on the porch, close to the door so it’s not visible from the street, there’s a large wood and wire cage holding a GUINEA PIG!
A GUINEA PIG!
Discovering a sorority mascot guinea pig when the best you were hoping for was some wooden letters is like a heaven-sent beam of light announced by a choir of singing angels. Ned and I look at each other and spring into action. I dash across the open area, check the street, signal Ned who leaps the banister, stuffs the guinea pig under his shirt, and leaps the banister again, and soon we’re racing toward home with the guinea pig squirming, laughing hysterically in the beautiful Charleston night as the air and joy swoops down from the sky to fill our lungs to bursting. We brainstorm hilarious ransom notes of cut-out magazine letters demanding midnight cookie drops and bras hung in windows and Monopoly money in an unmarked envelopes. It’s going to be a legend to tell our children’s children. First we’ll wait a couple days to make ‘em sweat and then we’ll send the note.
At home we have a dry aquarium where we keep two gerbils named Lynyrd and Skynyrd, and when we’re drunk enough that guinea pigs and gerbils are basically the same thing—both are cute, furry herbivores. They should be fine together. What could wrong? So we put the guinea pig in with the gerbils. It races around once but then stops at one end of the tank, sitting motionless, looking at the gerbils through it’s unlidded sideways eye. The little gerbils look up at the guinea pig in shock. But they don’t attack it or flee and no one squeals. Everyone seems to be getting along, so Ned and I go to our respective rooms and pass out.
About eleven the next morning I come to, and dimly remember the antics from the night before. Ha ha! Remember how we kidnapped a guinea pig last night?! That was hilarious! I stumble into the living room.
Sure enough, there’s the guinea pig from last night. Still in the tank motionless and staring, and Lynyrd is fine. But I notice Skynyrd has a limp. I don’t remember it having a limp before. I wake up Ned and we study the situation. Skynyrd’s foot is definitely sort of… bent sideways. Ned hasn’t noticed it before either.
Of course we wonder if somehow the guinea pig did it, but there are no cuts or blood or torn fur or bite marks, and the gerbils don’t seem agitated or in pain. They’re asking to be separated. Skynyrd probably had a limp all along and we just didn’t notice because we were busy. Being drunk. It’s just a twisted ankle. Or a cramp. By tomorrow Skynyrd’s foot will be fine.
We’ll wait a day to let the Tri-Delts worry and then send a ransom note.
Several times during the day I check the aquarium and the guinea pig is in the same position and the gerbils are going about their gerbil business. That night I wake up with a nightmare and I hurry into the living room. But the guinea pig is still there calm and sill. And the gerbils are going about their gerbil business. So I go back to bed.
The next morning I find the guinea pig is still in the same spot, But Lynyrd and Skynyrd…
Oh. My. God.
I start screaming f-bombs.
“F@%K! F@%K! F@%K!”
Ned comes stumbling in. “Dude, what the…?”
Then he looks at the gerbils.
He starts screaming f-bombs.
“F@%K! F@%K! F@%K!”
Ned grabs his shoes and runs off to the Tri-Delta house to see if there’s a way to get the guinea pig back into the cage NOW.
Meanwhile I’m transfixed by the spectacle.
Lynyrd and Skynyrd are alive, and their front halves look normal, but their back legs… It’s like their back legs have been snapped off, baked, and sewn back on upside down. They look like twigs. There’s no blood or bite marks or cuts, just limbs withered and bent as if the muscles were sucked out from the inside.
The gerbils are dragging themselves across the floor of the aquarium by their front paws while their bent back paws twist in the air and bounce behind them.
And the guinea pig stares at the ghastly spectacle through its haughty all-powerful, unblinking eye. It knows what it’s done. And it sees me too, and it feels like I’m next. Whatever it did to those poor geribls it’s going to do to me.
Ned comes back, his face is ashen.
“Dude, the cage is gone!”
“What?!”
“The cage is gone; it’s not on the porch! There’s no cage on the porch!”
“F@%K! F@%K! F@%K!”
Whatever. We’ll take it back tonight, cage or no cage. We’ll stuff it in an open window or cram it in the mailbox. Anything!
You’d think we’d separate the guinea pig from the gerbils now but I cannot think. I just spend all day pacing the living room watching the tank as the guinea pig mocks me. Whenever I go to the bathroom I run back in, half-expecting in the moments I was gone that the gerbils will be withered further. I begin to feel my own legs losing meat from their insides. Oh, I know that whatever horrifying things happen to me for the rest of my life the guinea pig will have done it and I’ll deserve it.
We’d planned to wait till twp in the morning but by ten o’clock Ned and I have cracked.
We’re walking briskly toward the Tri-Delta house trying to look casual as the guinea pig squirms under Ned’s shirt. I’m focused on the open window plan. But when we get there the sorority that just had its guinea pig stolen doesn’t randomly leave a window open, even if they would have before. I could break a window and toss the guinea pig in, but the windows are too high to see what’s in the rooms. I’d basically have to toss it blindly like a furry basketball into god-knows-what fate.
“Dude,” says Ned, “I’ll just ring the doorbell, drop it, and we’ll run.”
He steps around nearer the door and starts to take the guinea pig out from under his shirt, but I grab his arm to stop him. I can picture two random Tri-Delts answering the door together:
“I just don’t know; Meg is pretty but is she Delta-Delta-Delta pretty?”
They open the door just in time to see their beloved mascot guinea pig dashing off the sidewalk into the street where it’s flattened by a speeding Subaru.
So Ned is trying to let the guinea pig go and I’m trying to keep him from letting the guinea pig go, when suddenly I have a vision. Out beyond the haze of fear and stupidity for the first time all weekend my mind glimpses a chance.
“Wait! I’ll get a trashcan!”
Yes, I’ll dash to the backyard, grab a metal garbage can, bring it back to the front. Then we’ll drop the thing in the can, set it on the porch, and run.
I was too excited to explain all this to Ned; too excited not to realize he didn’t get my idea. So as I let go of the guinea pig and peeked around the false wall, casing the porch for a clear moment to race to the backyard.
I notice the spot where the cage should be and a thought occurs to me:
Isn’t it sort of odd that the Tri-Delts, the preppiest and snobbiest of all the college’s sororities, would have a guinea pig for a mascot?
But before I can reflect on the implications of this I see Ned ringing the doorbell. And I’m now in view of anyone coming out onto the porch.
F@%K! F@%K! F@%K!
I bolt for the sidewalk and dash past the neighboring house. Ned sees me bolting, thinks I’m spooked by something I saw on the porch, and bolts after me. We run past the the neighbor house and into their dark side yard. We press up against the wall of the house next to that one. I’m closest to the street, with him on my left closer to the backyard.
For a second I panice worried he dropped the guinea pig, but when I look over his shirt is squirming.
Then I notice behind Ned in the backyard is a kiddie wading pool and a tricycle, and then I notice Ned’s face, staring slack-jawed. I turn to see what he’s looking at and, wow, this house with the kiddie wading pool and the tricycle looks from this angle a lot like the Tri-Delta house next door.
Except on the porch of this house close to the door, so it’s not visible from the street, is an empty guinea pig cage.
Thanks for reading Blame Cannon! For the next couple of months I’ll circle between a series on global warming in prehistory, a story about coal, and a series of true stories about departures and goodbyes.
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