Friends forever…
Nearly two decades of living with different animals have taught this Neanderthal writer what humans couldn’t teach in a lifetime…
by Betsy May Veloo
When I first set my eyes on him, he was curled in the corner of a little cage — so tiny and so shrivelled up — on the pavement of one of the most densely-populated districts in Hong Kong. It was a hot summer’s day and he was just one of the many odds and ends an old woman was trying to sell to make ends meet.
David, my husband, and I had never seen a live Siberian chipmunk before let alone heard of such an animal species until that day!
I turned to David and said, “We are going to buy him, make him better and then let him loose somewhere deep in one of the country parks.”
“You sure about this?” David asked. But I knew then that he had also fallen in love with that little animal like me!
Little did we know that when we brought Xiao-ping – not named after anyone in particular – into our little 400-square-foot flat, our lives would change forever!
Efforts to make him better and let him loose in the jungle to run free all went out the door because In the months that followed, Xiao-ping never lived in the big cage that we got for him. He would rather stay among my clothes in the wardrobe.
He would jump into a large bowl I had placed on the refrigerator for his business. Neither my husband nor I had toilet-trained him but for some reason, he decided that the bowl was his private loo!
Besides the grapes, apples, pears and tomatoes I would get for him, he simply loved tea. He would hop on David’s tea cup each morning and have several sips. When I returned home from work, often with an ice cream cone, Xiao-ping would immediately greet me at the door by hopping on my shoulder for a lick of the ice cream.
We would both then sit in front of the TV and finish the ice- cream together. Chocolates and cheese were among his favourite snacks. Although I know that some vets would frown at the idea, we just couldn’t resist giving him a bite when we were snacking. He would try every “human” food we would bring home and we would never refuse him a taste.
One of his favourite pastimes was to run up our shoulder to our neck and snuggle there while we were watching TV, sometimes nibbling our hair for attention. He was just a little bundle of joy.
Much as we would have loved to free him into the jungles we decided, in the end, we couldn’t. He had become so “human” that he wouldn’t have survived in the wild.
And I must admit that that was my mistake because when he first came to us, he was so sick that I had to hand-feed him. Often, I would cuddle him and gently rock him to sleep. We wanted so much for him to survive. He did survive thankfully but he became domesticated.
Valuable Lessons Learned…
Xiao-ping taught me that I could be a responsible pet owner. When I was young, whenever my sisters and I brought home stray dogs, they would always end up with my mother looking after them. They were introduced to friends and relatives as “our” pet or “my” pet but responsibilities for their well-being, in reality, fell on my mother’s shoulders.
When I moved to Hong Kong I was a bit sad, thinking that I might not be ever able to keep a furry friend. My mum wouldn’t be with me to take care of it. However, having Xiao-ping, taught me otherwise.
When we moved to another bigger flat with a garden, we decided to expand our family, so we adopted two puppies from a shelter. Xiao-ping had his own room but whenever he could, he would sneak into the living room, chase the puppies around, jump on their heads and then onto the computer table to watch their reaction from there. It was so hilarious.
He did it so often and the puppies, I believe, actually enjoyed the chase. And, the two pups learned about living harmoniously with another animal. They were ever so gentle with their tiny “big” brother.
When Xiao-ping finally crossed over, we were devastated. There’s never been a day when I didn’t tear up whenever my family mentioned Xiao-ping or whenever I think about him.
“Get another chipmunk, auntie,” one of my nephews advised when he called to pay his condolences amid my sobs. “I couldn’t,” I replied. “It would be wrong.”
While I admit I had been tempted to get another Siberian chipmunk to replace Xiao-ping, deep down in my heart I knew that such exotic animals should never be kept as pets. They belong in the wild.
Because of Xiao-ping we also adopted two cats to keep the lovely energy flowing in our home. The quartet — our two cats and dogs — got on so famously that our neighbours were amazed at their camaraderie. The maxim of “fighting like dogs and cats” was not true in their case!
So, Xiao-ping, Sheba, Shanti, Tom and Harry will forever remain a beautiful memory and will also remain the loveliest little souls my husband and I have ever been blessed to meet.
It’s been a few years now…and all of them have been buried in Hong Kong. I have since left Hong Kong but the one lesson I have learned the most from my furry friends is this: “Why can’t we be like them…exercise tolerance for one another, love each other unconditionally, and be kind to one another?”
FOOTNOTE: Please do not keep Siberian Chipmunks as pets because they are never meant to be domesticated.
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