Pet Lives
An average human lives around seven dog lives,
four to six cat lives, over twenty gerbil lives
but only three or four chinchilla lives,
if our lone chinchilla who died at twenty
is typical and you’re not raising them for the fur.
We're slightly over the lifespan of wild African elephants
but more than double that of their zoo born kin,
roughly twice the life of an average dromedary,
although I’ve never known an average dromedary,
in between the mean for sperm and blue whales
but only eighty percent that of Galápagos tortoises.
Mind you elephants, dromedaries, whales and
tortoises aren’t normally kept as pets. Neither
are viruses, although technically speaking viruses
may not be alive to start with. But nonetheless
this novel coronavirus we humans have
adopted could change
the numbers for
our species.
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