Responsibility and Loss

My 6th grade teacher began a new project at our school during the year I was in her class. She secured some grant money to set up a science lab to be used by all the classes at the school in turns, much like weekly visits to the school library. Since my mom was also a teacher at the school, I was hanging around before and after school hours and got to help with the set-up and preparation of the lab.

We stocked cabinets with supplies, prepared materials for experiments, and set up stations for classes signed up to visit. Some of my 6th grade classmates volunteered to help in the lab as well, and as long as we kept up with our grades, we would be excused from class on occasion to assist visiting classes in the lab.

Because of my involvement with the lab, I also had two learning experiences with animals that year. First, we incubated eggs in the lab. The eggs were donated by a local farm, and the chicks were returned to the farm after hatching, but we kept one chick for a few weeks to watch it grow. I got to take it home with me over a weekend to complete my "experiment" for the science fair. I decided to test whether the chicken preferred dry corn feed, fresh corn kernels, or popped corn. (By volume, the popped corn was most devoured, but kernel for kernel the fresh corn won.) It was fun to have a chicken in a backyard pen for a few days, and it made me feel very trusted to care for her, but it made me wonder what would become of her on her return to the farm.

In the spring, my teacher added two guinea pigs to the lab. When summer arrived, she asked me and another student to adopt the pigs for the summer. I'm sure my mother wasn't thrilled, but she allowed me to bring Snowball home and keep her in my bedroom. It wasn't long before Snowball's appearance made it clear that her cage-mate in the lab had not been another female as previously thought. One morning, I woke to 3 tiny piglets in the cage with Snowball. One was either still-born or died very shortly after birth. I was shocked and filled with disbelief. I wondered if I could have done something to help it had I been there when it was born. (Most likely not.) The other two babies seemed to be healthy, but after a few days it seemed one was not thriving. That loss was even more difficult, as I had named it and watched it beginning to grow. The sense of helplessness was overwhelming and it made me angry that I couldn't do more for this little family. Only Taffy made it out of infancy, and became my pet. Snowball went back to the lab, but Taffy stayed in my room - at least for a while. After a few months, the squealing and litter changing outweighed the sweet eyes and soft fur. Since we had dogs, Taffy couldn't spend much time out of her cage or my room, and we decided we weren't giving her the love she deserved. We passed her along to a family that couldn't have dogs due to allergies and Taffy became one pampered pig. I was sad to see her go, but satisfied that I was finally doing something I knew was right for her.