Bubbles and Alfalfa Part 2 - The History Continues - DivineCaroline

At around four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, the door to Larry’s Pet Shop was forcibly swung wide open. An irate looking older gentleman dressed in lederhosen and a funny-looking gnome hat marched through the entrance with great determination. In his right hand he had a shoe box that had previously held men’s size ten shoes and now had a series of eight small holes punched through the lid.

“Zis! Zis!” he shouted at Larry in a strong German accent, “Zis is not a hasenpfeffer!” With strong emphasis he plunked the shoe box down on the counter.

Larry, who had no grasp of any language other than English, and even that was questionable at times, stared in confusion at the red-faced man before him.

“Offen zie box!” the man ordered, violently wagging his finger at the cardboard container, his face getting redder by the second which only served to accent the whiteness of the tufts of hair sticking out on either side of his round head.

Larry did as told, fingers trembling as he opened the lid to the box, praying that whatever was in there was not going to jump out and attack him. As soon as the lid was off, he stepped back to prepare himself for the aforementioned possibility. When no wild raging creature sprang out at him, Larry tentatively leaned forward and peered into the box. His first reaction when he saw what was in there was to breathe an inward sigh of relief. His second was to wonder what the hell the man was screaming about.

In the box, in a corner was crouched a gerbil, the same inoffensive brown gerbil that Larry had sold to the man two days before. He recognized the man now. At the time of the sale, the man had not been wearing his lederhosen, he had on a French beret and he had definitely not been screaming.

It took a bit of gesturing and deciphering of mispronounced words before Larry finally understood what had happened. The man, who happened to be called Rudolph, quite appropriately at the moment in consideration of his red face which of course included his nose, had bought the gerbil for his grandchildren. It was only after he had gotten the gerbil home and browsed through an animal encyclopedia that he realized the word gerbil was not English for rabbit.