Weird Science

Today we had a visit from a company that specialises in showing animals to old people in care homes. They have visited here before and this time I'd asked for some unusual animals. We were hoping for a meerkat but were willing to settle for a chinchilla or a parrot. When the very nice girl-animal wrangler arrived she told me that she was sorry, she didn't have a chinchilla and wasn't quite sure why we'd been offered one. Plus the parrot was two now and had started kicking off so she'd left it at home (we would've liked that! It would have woken my sleepy residents up a little!). 'Do you have a meerkat then?' I asked, ever hopeful. 'Oh no!' she chuckled, 'they're really difficult to look after!'
The science bit was looking less weird with every passing minute.

In the upstairs lounge only four out of twelve residents were awake and ready to greet the animals who, it transpired were exactly the same ones as we saw last time.....a fat guinea pig, a lopless big rabbit and apparently a hairless creature, the species of which none of the residents were quite sure of when I quizzed them later (I wasn't able to stay for the whole show). I was sitting beside one of the residents, an old Scots lady called Mhairi whilst she was petting the rabbit and she asked the animal-girl a question in quite a soft voice. After asking her to repeat the question three times and still not catching what Mhairi said, Animal-Girl turned helplessly to me. 'What are you saying Mhairi' I said to her, having only caught the word 'mother'.

'Is its mother a dog?' was what she was trying to ascertain. Phew! Weirdness resumes!!!

Pic from here