CASTROVILLE, CA.—On average, they weigh about 6 ounces and grow to a length of 4 inches, but Chuckie Swill saw them as enormous sources of power and energy and what he hoped would land him enough money to pay off his house, retire early, and buy a bass boat or two. But what Swill didn’t bank on was the enormous source of power and energy a huge corporation can generate once it catches a whiff of what might be a threat to their bottom line and, ultimately, their stock price.
“Few know this,” said Swill, sitting on the porch of his thirty-year-old, three bedroom ranch-style house that sits 30 feet from the Castroville city line, “but the gerbil is extremely strong when compared to other animals. They could kick the crap out of a rat twice its size. And If I was a hamster, I wouldn’t even think about fighting one. And I think about what it’d be like to be a hamster most days, so I should know.”
But what Swill, who has farmed artichokes on his five-acre spread for over 30 years, discovered five years ago changed the course of his life forever. “My son got a gerbil for Christmas, and put an artichoke heart in its cage one day,” said Swill. “Herbie [the gerbil] ate it, pushed off the top of the cage, climbed on Chuckie Jr.’s chest and demanded a second helping at knifepoint.”
It took another thirty or so angry, violent outbursts by Herbie before Swill began to suspect the crop he grew was the source of Herbie’s otherworldly strength and hyper-aggressive behavior. To be sure, Swill bought another dozen gerbils, fed them artichokes, then sat back and watched them rumble, smoke cigarettes, and spin the hamster wheel so fast its bearings melted.
The possibilities flooded Swill, so he began to breed gerbils in his detached garage. And with the help of his brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, he harnessed the power generated by 1,100 hamster wheels spinning at over 500 RPMs to supply electricity to his home. But Swill’s modest acreage couldn’t keep up with the gerbils’ eating demands, and, after his electricity shut off during The Super Bowl, he knew he needed help, that his ambitious plans couldn’t be carried out alone.
“When Chuckie first called me, I listened to him, then hung up the phone and swore I’d find another line of work,” said Vernon Masterson, the President of The California Artichoke Growers Association. “I’ve always questioned why God put me here. I’m fairly certain it’s not to protect and promote the artichoke. If it is, God owes me another shot at life, and I’m not talking about working with spices or roots next time.
“But, because we don’t do much around here other than create new artichoke recipes, then publish them in our newsletter, The Monthly Artichokian, I decided What the hell?, I’ll go see his gerbils.”
Once Masterson saw a gerbil power a hair dryer for twenty minutes after consuming an artichoke, he was sold on the idea. And even though he was roughed up by several of Swill’s gerbils, who stole his wallet and claimed they knew where he lived, Masterson gathered up the 650 artichoke farmers in and around Castroville, which is known as The Artichoke Capital of the World. He told them if they would commit a third of their crop to feed the gerbils—its population advancing by over 200 per day—they could share in the lucrative alternative energy profits. He insisted that within a year Swill’s gerbils could supply power to over 10,000 central California homes.
Enter Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the 105-year-old utilities company that has been the sole provider of electricity to Castroville and its surrounding counties for the last 80 years. While alternative sources of energy are now abundant in larger metropolitan areas, PG&E wasn’t ready to lose any rural business without a fight. Their Alternative Energy Division recruited interns to travel the state and corner the market on gerbils, raiding pet stores and buying them from children at fifty times their value.
“We didn’t know what we were doing,” said Cliff Shell, who resigned as Vice President of PG&E’s Alternative Energy Division after his neck became infected from a gerbil bite. “We were sitting on over 50,000 gerbils, but didn’t know what to do with them. And we were preparing the artichokes all wrong, getting too cute, adding olive oil, butter and spices. They never got stronger, just fatter and more lethargic. I’ve got a Stanford MBA and there I was, trying to coax 50,000 rodents to spin their wheels.”
Because PG&E couldn’t figure out how to generate power from their gerbils, they decided to approach Swill and his fellow farmers, to write them all big checks, partner with them, and make their 1,500 gerbils PG&E employees. And, of course, they could learn how to whip their own gerbils into wheel spinning shape. But the farmers voted down PG&E’s proposal, confident their gerbils were multiplying so fast they would be able to compete for the energy dollar in Los Angeles and San Francisco within the next ten years.
“Yep, we screwed up,” said Swill, his head down. “I never saw it coming. I never questioned the pesticides we were using, what they might be doing to the gerbils.”
Endosulfan, a pesticide that has been used by the farmers for over two decades and was recently banned by The Environmental Protection Agency, was discovered to be the culprit, ultimately quelling the high testosterone levels from the male gerbils after weeks of hyper-aggressive behavior. Swill couldn’t coax them into their wheels. They’d just watch TV or walk around the cage grousing about having to pick up after themselves. Occasionally they’d boast about doing menial, odd jobs around the cage, like fixing a broken latch or oiling a hinge.
“You can’t fight big business,” said Swill bitterly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if PG&E knew what the Endosulfan would do to the gerbils, then sprinkled high doses of it on our fields. I couldn’t get one to have sex if I sent it to Paris with a crate of wine and Scarlett Johansson.
“And even if you took Endosulfan out of the equation, all of those How to Prevent STDs leaflets PG&E scattered throughout my cages really did a number on them.”—Citizen Dick Arneson reporting
