Columnist Bob Shemeligian: Some decades, you just can’t keep pocket pets in stock

Bob Shemeligian

Thursday, Sept. 12, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

IT WAS 23 YEARS ago when the pop group America delighted some of us with a cute little ballad about muskrat love.

A few years later, the Captain and Tennille made the song into a hit; they even sang it before a rather confused Queen Elizabeth II.

But credit America with the concept -- the original image of a pair of whiskered creatures somehow brought to life by the slow melody.

It was an innocent song, destined to become one of the great slow-dance numbers favored by college boys who lived for that one close dance with the young blond-haired girl, who would rather be dancing to disco.

It was a great image -- but it was only that.

Really, muskrats are aquatic rodents who are so named because of a strong substance with a penetrating and distinct odor they will produce at the first sign of trouble.

If muskrats liked dry climates, they wouldn't be called muskrats at all. They'd be called pocket pets.

And this, I truly believe, is part of what's wrong with America in the '90s.

Laugh at the lava lamps and flairs of the '70s all you want, but at least we confined muskrats to romantic imagery then.

Today, creatures like them are sold by the thousands every day to people who choose not to have a dog or a cat, simply because these animals have been kept as pets since the first primates started to walk.

They choose, for example, ferrets or prairie dogs.

"There is an upswing in the pocket pets," Joe Bill, a Lubbock, Texas, pet-store owner said. "Ferrets, chinchillas, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, any small apartment-type animals."

Excuse me, Joe?

I'm not sure a landlord would consider a ferret or a chinchilla to be an "apartment-type animal."

An "apartment-type animal from hell" would be a better description.

I know. I've been in apartments where the tenant had kept a ferret, and he surely didn't give the little creature the care it deserved.

I still remember the smell -- although it's hard to describe.

Still, local pet-store owners say pocket pets, when handled correctly, can be cute and cuddly buddies.

"A prairie dog is a cool pet. He'll sit on your lap when you watch TV and eat french fries till he falls asleep," said Ken Foose, co-owner of Exotic Pets in Las Vegas. "But a ferret is different. A ferret is a spring covered with fur. It's really like a slinky."

Danny Carrera, a supervisor at Pet Kingdom 2000, said he can't keep enough hedgehogs, prairie dogs and flying squirrels in stock to please the pocket-pet-loving public.

Flying squirrels? What do you do with those things? Invent a drinking contest involving different flying stunts in the apartment after each shot?

"They glide," Carrera said, "and I wouldn't advise that."

People must love these pocket pets, because the price tag is anything but puny. The price for a fun-loving prairie dog is at least $150.

Which should give any entrepreneur an idea of a good '90s business to pursue -- rather than income properties.