Pets Surprise! continued...

Welcome to part 2 of Pets Surprise!. If you haven't read part one, go ahead and read it now! Here's the link: Pets Surprise! (part 1)

So, we left off at:

Once inside the stool, the hedgehog overturned the plastic box and fell down upside down. Finally, at the end, we managed to get the hedgehog into a bigger box and put it in a corner in Theodore’s room, safe out of sight. Whew! But our troubles were far from over. What would Daddy do when he found out that he had refused a bunny and now a hedgehog was in his house?

And here is the rest of the story:

After settling down the hedgehog in the cardboard box, the four of us kids gathered together in the kitchen to discuss plans. Our problem was to figure out how to tell our parents about the hedgehog so that we could keep it.

As we were discussing plans, Mom walked into the room. We all stopped talking immediately. Mom could easily sense that we were up to something.

“What happened?” she asked. We told her the whole story. Mom was very excited when she heard about the baby hedgehog.

Mommy is very good at taking care of pets. She has lots of experience from taking care of her siblings’ pets (when she and her siblings were little) and her children’s pets (when we were little, and sometimes even now J). Together, we looked up what hedgehogs eat and how to take care of them.

Hedgehogs are very loud. They are also nocturnal. So far, all of Theodore’s pets have been kept in his room. However, since hedgehogs are very loud and are also nocturnal, this was definitely not an option. We definitely needed to find another place to host our baby hedgehog. Oh, and there was Daddy, too. We needed to find a way to tell him so that he would let us keep the hedgehog.

Before we could think about that, it was already time for dinner. I was chosen to say grace for our meal.

“Dear God,” I prayed, “Thank you for the food which You have given us. Thank you for the baby hedgehog…”

I gasped. There was nothing else to do but to finish my prayer and wait and see what would happen next. When we finished praying, Anabel and Theodore’s faces were red from trying not to laugh. Daddy was smiling. He thought it was a joke. Whew! That was a close call!

As we ate dinner, Theodore and I tested Daddy to see how he would react if we told him about the hedgehog.

“Daddy, what if there was a bunny that was abandoned by its mom and needed a home? What would you do, Daddy?” we asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t take it,” Daddy replied.

“But what if we were the only people who could help the bunny and the bunny was already in our house?”

“Then I would put it in Theodore’s room,” Daddy joked.

“So we could keep it?” we asked excitedly.

“Well, I…” began Daddy, but before he could finish…

Anabel, Theodore, and I cried, “Yay! Then we can get the bunny!”

We were so excited! Now we could have a bunny and a hedgehog. Well, at least we thought so.

“No,” said Daddy, “we can’t get the bunny. It’s too big of a responsibility.

“But you said we could have it!” we protested.

“No,” said Daddy, shaking his head.

Now, Daddy is really nice and allows us to keep a lot of pets even though he doesn’t really like pets, especially pets with fur (they give him allergy). We begged and begged for the bunny, but Daddy still shook his head. We didn’t give up, though.

J

Let’s go back to our hedgehog’s story. Throughout dinner, we could constantly hear the “Yeeh-Yeeh” sound of the hedgehog, and the scratch-scratch noise of it walking around in the cardboard box. At night it would be even louder! We really needed to put it somewhere else. But where? Mommy thought of the perfect place – in the patio!

Our patio is more of a side-room next to our living room. It is about 3 feet wide, 8 feet long, and is used for many things. Most of the patio is used for hanging our clothes to dry (we don’t have a clothes dryer in China). One corner is dedicated to cardboard boxes and our potted plants. The other corner is empty and is sometimes used as Theodore’s experiment space. Theodore was willing to give up that space for the hedgehog.

windows
plants	Area for hanging clothes
tenrec
Living room

Once Tenrec (that’s our hedgehog’s name) made his home in the patio, Theodore took on the responsibility of taking care of his new pet. Once every 10 minutes, Theodore would check on Tenrec, make sure he was doing ok, and feed him some food. Daddy became very curious about what Theodore was up to.

J

Let’s go back to our bunny’s story. Mom was going to give one last try in trying to convince Daddy to let us have the bunny. She typed up a message for Dad to send just in case if he said “yes” to the bunny. But before she could ask Daddy one last time, something unexpected happened. Daddy accidentally sent the message himself!

Our friend replied, “Great! I’ll bring the bunny over on Sunday afternoon!”

As for Tenrec, Daddy saw Theodore keep on going to the patio. He wondered what Theodore was up to and went to look for himself. That’s how he found out about the hedgehog. J

Now we have a tenrec and a bunny! They both stayed happily in our patio.

The other day, I heard Daddy talking to himself. You’ll never guess what he said!

He said, “So, my conclusion is, the bunny is… is very cute.”

Yay! Daddy likes the bunny now! We heard it with our own ears. J