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Hello, all!

Today, let's talk about pets! Everyone likes different animals. Some people like dogs, some people like cats, and some people like capybaras or degus.

Degus are basically giant, more intelligent gerbils. They are very fashionable.

I really like pet rodents. As a child, I had gerbils, guinea pigs, a rat, and a mouse. The gerbils were cute and friendly, but didn't have a lot of personality. The guinea pigs were great pets, but complete gluttons. We tried not to feed them too much, but they just kept on getting fatter. One of them was like Jabba the Guinea Pig; she was so obese that she could pull her head into her fat like a turtle if she wanted to cover her eyes and ears!

Like this, but about twice as much guinea pig.

The rat was kind of sad. We're pretty sure it had an unfortunate mental problem; it couldn't understand its multistory cage, and it often fell from one level to another rather painfully. It couldn't understand its exercise ball, either. Instead of running around like it was suppose to, it would try to climb the side of the ball and then be completely surprised (and fall over) every time it moved!

But the mouse—my pet mouse was the best pet I ever had! I bought him when I was 12, and named him "Martin the Warrior, Son of Luke the Warrior, Guardian of Redwall!" (I loved the Redwall books as a preteen. I am very embarrassed about this now.) Martin was awesome. He loved playing with humans and never, ever bit people. If you put some peanut butter on your finger, he would happily lick if off without ever biting. He could do a number of tricks,

Yes, you can teach a mouse to play basketball, roll over, play dead, and many other things!
and he was super-smart! My friends and I built huge Lego mazes for him, and he solved every one. He didn't even need a reward—he just liked using his brain! He also loved sitting on people's shoulders and watching what they were doing. If I had Martin on my shoulder and sat down to read, he would nestle into my shirt and take a nap until I was finished. My whole family loved Martin, and we still talk about him like a family member.

The only sad thing about Martin's life was that—and this is weird—his ears fell off. His favorite food was peanuts, so we liked to give him a whole peanut in the shell and watch him work. He would carefully chew open the shell and break it up into little pieces. Then he'd use the shell pieces to line his nest, and eat the peanut inside. It was adorable... but we didn't know that the shells of many peanuts contain a fungus that can damage mice's health. In Martin's case, the fungus made most of his right ear and a big part of his left ear fall off. He lived a long, happy life after this happened, but he did wind up looking like a pirate mouse!

Although I'm sure not every mouse is as wonderful as Martin was, I really, really recommend trying one as a pet. They're small, cheap, clean, friendly, easy to take care of, and they have so much personality! Just be careful not to feed your mouse unshelled peanuts...

What was the best pet you ever had?

—Matthew