For Mrs. Gruber’s fourth-grade class project Frank chose a fiddler crab. He would care for it at home. That was the point \u2013 each fourth-grader would raise a pet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Look,” called Frank on the second day with the crab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What is it?” His mother Frieda was in the kitchen. “See what he wants, Mel.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His father went upstairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What is it, Mel?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The things dead,” shouted Mel. “Not only that, but it smells.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next was a turtle. Mel Fromkin brought a small one home from the pet shop that previously sold him a crab. There was plenty of time to complete the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Hey.” Frank pointed to the turtle in the bowl on his bureau. For two days, he’d fed the thing lettus and a few nasty pellets of reptile food. He called downstairs. “It’s dead.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Did you kill that?” asked Frieda after Frank left for school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No.” Mel shook his head. “But that damn thing smells as bad as the crab.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A goldfish didn’t last much longer either. So, Frank ended up with a hamster he named Frank Jr. Mel bought Frank Jr. from the same pet store that had sold him the other creatures. Did Mrs. Gruber get a kickback from the place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Oh, no.” Frank pointed to the hamster cage. Frank Jr. was not running on the wheel. Frieda had come into his bedroom. Mel didn’t look forward to going to the pet store again. He didn’t relish putting a dead hamster in the trash, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Look at Frank Jr.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Tell him I don’t want to smell him,” called Mel from the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Look,” demanded Frank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Freda bent over the cage. “How about that?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What?” Mel called from the kitchen as he poured coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Come up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Frank Jr.’s had babies.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mel put down his cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Babies?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“And one of them’s still alive.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Sydney is a physician. He writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Mrs. Gruber’s fourth-grade class project Frank chose a fiddler crab. He would care for it at home. That was the point \u2013 each fourth-grader would raise a pet. “Look,” called Frank on the second day with the crab. “What is it?” His mother Frieda was in the kitchen. “See what he wants, Mel.” His … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-X5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3665,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions\/3665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}