{"id":71617,"date":"2019-06-26T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=71617"},"modified":"2019-06-23T16:43:46","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T21:43:46","slug":"gerbils-for-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=71617","title":{"rendered":"Gerbils For Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>My granddaughter is on vacation this week in Wisconsin Dells, so Grandma and I are gerbil-sitting. I remember gerbils from the olden days, they were just rats that lived in a big cage and made noise all night. Nowadays, they have a space-age plastic entertainment complex, with a menu of carefully selected natural foods and colorful blocks of wood, scientifically selected from the best species to promote rodent tooth health and avoid chemicals that may be hazardous.<br>That stupid rat lives better than I do, and vastly better than people in Venezuela, not to mention the free-range rats living in my attic. When did pets become bling?<br>I suppose I shouldn&#8217;t complain. At least she hasn&#8217;t declared it to be her emotional support animal, so I can prohibit her from bringing it in the car.<br>Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>When you think about it?  Gerbils have gotta be thankful for the blessings of the free market.  Not only do they live better than &#8220;citizens&#8221; (subjects) in Venezuela, but in fact they&#8217;re pretty much food down there these days.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My granddaughter is on vacation this week in Wisconsin Dells, so Grandma and I are gerbil-sitting. I remember gerbils from the olden days, they were just rats that lived in a big cage and made noise all night. Nowadays, they have a space-age plastic entertainment complex, with a menu of carefully selected natural foods and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-capitalism-v-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71623,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71617\/revisions\/71623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}