“She looked as if she had climbed out of her own grave. Which, basically, she had.”

In NYT Magazine Walnut and Me (gift link): Sam Anderson writes about his pets (kind of), with beautifully illustrated animations by Gaia Alari. It starts off with a hamster going missing in the house:

Finally, on the third day, we gave up. It seemed silly to keep hoping. We all just had to swallow hard and accept the fact that our sweet little Mango, who had been our daughter’s 16th-birthday present – who used to nibble fresh raspberries right out of our fingers – sweet little Mango had met her maker somewhere deep in the walls. All because I didn’t fix that stupid hole.

However.

When I say that we gave up on Mango, I should actually say that the humans in our house gave up on her.

There’s a podcast too.

His story about Moby and Walnut made me tear up – my first-ever dog was named Snax — he was a 6lb chihuahua rescue that took about 2 months to even let me pet him, but he loved my kid so fiercely, during a time of pretty great distress. Eventually we bonded and he was my pal too, during daylight hours. At night I was still the enemy. Sam puts words to how I felt:

I was also full of rage. I wanted to burn down the universe. I either wanted Moby back, which I knew was impossible, or I wanted nothing – no dog ever again.

Life seemed to be some kind of scam, a little shell game, in which every living thing secretly carried the pain of its own loss. And I was determined never to fall for it again.

It ruined me when Snax died. And I resented the new dog for a little while too. But now me and (smaller, gentler) Scooter are good pals.

Here they are:

Read the story, it’s short and perfect.

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