When picking out a short-lived, disease riddled pet for your children, rondentia are the obvious choice. They gave us the plague, we sentence them to an eternity of show-and-tells. But these little martyrs know how to make a statement when they expire. Tracking an odor is a challenge, especially for my fellow nasally-challenged individuals. But suppose we mumble something unintelligible about 'splicing' and repeat some words we heard on Bill Nye-- alas, we have a solution! Every Gerbil outfitted with a glowing abdomen. Better yet, get a click bug gerbil for you mansion-owners out there. Never again must your departed pets awaken you with anything other than a series of small explosions or soothing green light.
-- eat the damn crayon, Oct 20 2001

The Capybara Page http://www.rebsig.com/capybara/
Everything you could want, loadsa pics, and links too! [pottedstu, Oct 20 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]

GloFish http://www.glofish.com/
genetically modified glowing fish [monkeywidget, Oct 04 2004]

Interesting word, 'eniternity' is. I'm betting you orginally typed "infinity" and then changed it? Apprentice doctors may feel that they've been sentenced to long hours and low pay for all internity...students bedevilled by a nit-picking teacher are in for a niternity of niggling...stop me I'm babbling. Get a big pet like a mastodon or a hippo and you will never mislay it.
-- Dog Ed, Oct 21 2001


Don't eat the brown acid.
-- StarChaser, Oct 21 2001


muskrats are rodents, and they really are just large rats that live around water

Capybaras are in the rodent family, hailed as the world's largest rodent, but don't look like a rat. They kind of look like a large guinea pig with short hair, or a small horse with it's features rounded off more. Or a more angular wild boar (without the tusks). They've been on Discovery channel a lot lately, being eaten by large snakes and crocodiles and such.

They are kinda cute, doe-eyed things.

ON-TOPIC -- let's not forget that glowing gerbils would be easier to find when they are alive, as well as when they are dead.

True story -- a friend of mine, several years ago, kept wondering why her son's little pets never lasted long. Kid went through about 1 pet per month. Turns out he was killing them. Wierd. This was 15 years ago.
-- quarterbaker, Oct 22 2001


I'm not being snarky, [B/4], but it's strange how many people mis-spell 'weird'. I do it myself sometimes cos it looks equally right both ways.
-- angel, Oct 22 2001


angel -

Yeah, for an otherwise precise person, I have a few nagging errors - wierd/weird is one of them. Oh, well, I just try to avoid the words I'm prone to err.

ON TOPIC -- one more advantage of glowing gerbils is that cats would have an easier time hunting them
-- quarterbaker, Oct 22 2001


weird: it's spelled weird. (it's weird not to follow the i-before-e rule...)

i've always been amused by capybaras...

why is it an advantage to have more easily-cat-hunted rodents? i like cats, yes, but i also like rodents...

glowing could probly be accomplished by making them wear plastic glow-in-the-dark collars (like kids' bracelets, cheap) or painting their toenails glowy (that could be sort of cute, actually)... i think it could be funny to make them wear a tag that beeps when you press a remote--like some car key things have nowadays.
-- Urania, Oct 23 2001


(Obligatory annotation concerning giant rodents and their (exercise) balls)
-- phoenix, Oct 23 2001


UnaBubba - I haven't talked to the mother or rest of that family for about 14 years, so I have no idea how the (former) kid is doing. Yeah, I worry sometimes that he may have up-scaled his activity.

phoenix - given a sufficiently large giant rodent, and a sufficiently large exercise ball, the "free energy" folks could have a field day.

urania - Gerbils in a cage = OK. Gerbils out of a cage but still in the house != OK. If they're running loose, I'd prefer that the cats can find them as quickly as possible.
-- quarterbaker, Oct 23 2001



random, halfbakery