We've got a little girl living with us, right now. She's a foreign exchange student whose family is originally from South America but she grew up in Arlington. She lives with us now because her parents no longer want her. They brought her to Mary's class one day and when the Christmas holidays came, told Mary to keep her, they didn't want her any more. Talk about cruel.

So, Pearl has exchanged her home with one of the students to a home with one of the teachers. But that's OK, Pearl, she's a guinea pig by the way, fits into the menagerie of pets in our family quite well.

You see, we have Pearl, Midnight the Wonder Dog, our black lab coon hound mix dog, there's our lizard and the three goldfish that beg.

We also feed the squirrels and birds in our back yard. But the reason I bring up Pea…