I have always had a "thing" for rodents. Favorite toy as a tot was a rubber mousie. Wanted a hamster for my 9th birthday -- but Mom (highly rodent-phobic) got me a bird instead. Rats. Favorite animals at the zoo -- the prarie dogs. Love 'em. Maybe that's why I don't find anything wrong with Walt's obsession with a mouse! What's not to love?
And in keeping with that, I always loved Gopher from the Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh (when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's house). Maybe it was his cute gopheresque lisp. Maybe it was his waddle. Who knows. When we moved to WV, I was thrilled to see all the groundhogs -- I love those little varmints. I pass a huge field of them every day on my way to work. SOmetimes, on the weekends, I actually drive my kids over to the field so they can see them out in the field, too! We currently have no hamsters (or gophers, or groundhogs...) in our house, BUT -- we do have 2 head of pig (guinea that is) and one rabbit! And when I see those two guinea pig faces looking at me, whistling, and then chomping down whatever snack I give them in their methodical chew-chew-happy way, all I can think of is,
"Sssssummer sssssssquash!"
My pediatrician has a major fortune invested in Disney. He has every beanie ever sold hanging from his office ceilings. He has the snowglobes, the plate collections, boxed pin sets. He just bought flat screens for each of the 3 waiting/exam rooms so that there is a Disney movie playing in every room! And most of all, he has row after row of stuffed animals -- little to huge, from every movie imaginable, and even park critters like Figment too.
BUT...
That man DID NOT HAVE A GOPHER.
Perish the thought --
NO GOPHER.
My dd (age 2 at the time) was in his office one day and she determined, "Mommy, he's got no Gopher..." I thought, nah, can't be -- we visually cased the joint, but sure enough, no Gopher. So we questioned him about it, and he looked at me, blinked and said,
"Gopher? Who's that? Is he Disney?"
I stared back incredulously and said in my most Gopheresque voice, "Sssssay! You should do sssomething about that sssspeech impediment, Sssssonny!" He looked at me like I was one taco short of a combo platter. The doc was gopher-clueless. So when we went to WDW last year, we pit-stopped into Once Upon a Toy, just to buy a Gopher for doc! When I took it to the counter to pay, the clerk looks at me and says, with a totally straight face,
"He's not in the book, you know."
My response (equally straight-faced): "And come to think of it, he's mighty glad of it!"
We both had a laugh off of that -- the kind of dialogue only gopher fans would know or appreciate, I guess! (And ironic too because Gopher really ISN'T in the book, either -- he's a Disney add-in). My kids now get a kick out of visiting the doc's office and trying to find Gopher amidst all the other animals, but it isn't that hard to find him -- he's always sitting right out front, on the corner as you pass the desk, right where someone who's "not in the book"
ought to be.
And that's probably more about me and gopher than you EVER WANTED TO KNOW!
As for my photo in my sig -- fairly self-explanatory. That's us at Animal Kingdom from Aug 2004. I loved those shots because that was a day we took as just the 5 of us, the last day of an excellent 13 day trip. My OHANA mean everything to me!
