Recalcitrant

Obstinately stubborn, determined to resist authority, unruly (adj.)

When I was in fifth grade I asked if I could have a pet and my father said no. But, determined to give me a more typical childhood, my mother protested and my father tensed his jaw and gave in to her assertion. That weekend my mother and I went to the pet store. We bought a black gerbil that I named Choshy on the car ride home after the Hebrew word for black, choshech.
We bought Choshy a cage, a water bottle, wood chip shavings, and a metal wheel to occupy himself. After assembling his habitat we put the fish tank-like cage near the front door and set little Choshy inside of it, securing a metal grate to the top of the cage.
During my ownership of Choshy he never seemed content. He refused food and water, would pace back and forth in his cage, and he escaped several times. Every time my father chased him Choshy ran under the oven. When we cornered him during these pursuits, I got down on my knees to look at him underneath the oven. Every time I saw Choshy huddled in a dark corner, like he was waiting for us to broil something.
Choshy seemed happiest when he was running in his wheel--it was his only constructive activity. But when he ran he squeaked with each rotation like a prisoner might mumble when lifting a dumbbell.
Choshy also liked chewing innumerable cardboard toilet paper rolls. He would chew one in less than five minutes. With the chewed pieces he would build nests and hide himself within them. After several toilet paper rolls, we had to start cleaning the cage because we could no longer see him-- what is the point of having a pet that you cannot watch in its cage?

One morning before school I went downstairs to eat my daily bowl of cereal and I heard a piercing squeak echo down the hallway. I ran to Choshy's cage and I saw him running frantically around in circles, leaving a dark trail behind him. This was strange behavior so I looked closer. Choshy was splashing little lines of blood against the glass of his cage, bleeding from his mouth as he squeaked. After several more seconds of this he slowed down, wobbled, and fell over.

When we cleaned his cage that night, I took out his running wheel and saw a small brown-red stain on the metal base that held the wheel in place. In the wood chips surrounding the base I also found a set of two front teeth that Choshy had, I guess, broken off while chewing in desperate rebellion.