The Tale of the Carpet Gerbil

Hello, Dearies,

How are you? How’s life? Working on anything neat? Write any really awesome lines lately? Draw a cool picture? Show me. My brain needs some inspiration. I haven’t written in weeks. So my apologies if this post is smeared in coppered flakes of rust.

We’ve been discussing Urban Legends round the MS campfire. I’ve been digging into my city’s online vaults for a tale or two, but there aren’t any good ones. So this little tale comes from none other than the handsome, the fancy dancy, Mr. Jenna.

“We’re doing Urban Legends this month on the blog,” I said to my husband as he walked in the door from yet another day at work. “Know any?”

“Everyone has heard the story about the carpet gerbil,” Mr. Jenna said as he scratched at the scruff decorating his chin.

“The what?” I asked. “The rug hamster?”

Mr. Jenna rolled his sky-blue eyes so hard they nearly disappeared into his skull. He cracked a cold one and leaned against the counter. “My boss told me about the story. It happened a while ago out east. Toronto, I think. Any ways, so this guy is kicking carpet in this big old house. The family is home and the kids are everywhere and the Mom is stressed and the whole job is taking forever The little girl keeps crawling into the room as buddy is stapling carpet. She’s got one of those rodent balls with a fat little gerbil in it and the little bugger kept rolling into the room. So the installer keeps gently asking the little girl to leave so he can get the f…can you swear on the blog?”

I nodded. Vigurously. 

“So buddy wants to get the fuck out of there. He’s got tickets to hockey game and it’s the weekend. The little girl finally scampers off with her pet. The guy runs out to the car for one last box of staples, comes back in, pops off a few more staples for good measure, and calls it a day. He’s giving it a once over when he sees a little lump in the carpet. He nudges it with his foot and it smoothes out until it’s a hardly noticeable ridge. He should fix it properly but he doesn’t have the time. He spots another one, this one a little bigger. He loads up his tool bag on the way over. The little girl starts yelling for her mom and the dad comes home and the dog is barking and the installer capitalizes on the chaos and quickly thumps the lump wit his rubber mallet.”

Mr. Jenna took a sip of his beer.

“As soon as the mallet hit the lump, he heard a squeak. Then a dozen tiny cracks, and then a squelchy, sticky squish.”

My eyes bulged. I instantly regretted choosing marinara as the sauce for supper.

“Like I said though, he was late for the game. It was Friday. So he whacked it again – bang! bang! bang!- until it flattened out. For once grateful that a homeowner chose dark brown shag for their living room.”

I grilled Matt on whether or not it was true for the rest of the night. His boss swears it is. He heard it from a friend of a friend of his.

Ta-ta.