Back to life

You may be wondering, "if Skippy died of poisoning, then how did Fred survive?" Well, Fred got really sick the very next day and we all thought he was going to die too. He just sat there with his eyes closed and didn't respond and was barely breathing. When I picked him up he was stiff. So I left for school telling the kids to put him in a plastic container when he stopped breathing. I felt awful that we had poisoned our little gerbils.
When I got home I expected Fred to be dead, but he was not. He was still breathing and twitching. I left him for another hour or two thinking he would be gone any moment. He did not go. He kept breathing. I had a moment of introspection, remembering how Lillian fought to survive so hard despite her many open heart surgeries and dysfunctional heart, and how we almost gave her up one night but the surgeon asked us to give her one more chance because she was still fighting. I thought, "This gerbil is fighting, there must be something I can do to help him." So I picked up that gerbil and I took him upstairs where it was warmer. Then I had a brilliant inspiration to put him in the oven. (My great grandmother was a preemie and the doctor put a cloth over her and told her father to just let her die. He took her home, put her in a shoe box, and put her in the oven until she responded. And she lived and had a numerous posterity.) I put Fred in a container on a hot pad in a warm oven and I sat by the oven and watched him. His ears started to twitch, and his tail moved. After a few minutes his breathing started regulating. I could tell the little gerbil blood in his veins was circulating. I started trying to give him drops of water. He wouldn't drink but he responded to the water on his face. After 30 minutes of watching him in the oven he started stirring. Another ten minutes or so and he was trying to get out of the container. I knew this would happen if he "came to" and I didn't save him to lose him to the oven burners! I grabbed his little foot and saved him just as he was plunging to a firey death. I was shaking as I held him.
We brought up his cage and put it on the oven door and kept him warm. After an hour or so he started drinking! What a miracle! I felt so happy that this little rodent came back to life. Its now been 24 hours and he seems fully recovered and trying to escape from his cage again. We are going to get him a mate so he can have a posterity.