Spanning 25 years of marriage, Pickle is an accounting of the wide range of
pets collected by a couple with a penchant for rescuing animals.
For no particular reason, most of the creatures in Tom & Debbie Nicholsons
menagerie suffer from unusual medical conditions. Many of them meet a
tragic, unexpected demise, and ironically, they are too often the casualties of
attacks by other animals. Occasionally they far outlive normal life expectancy,
making them both lucky and unlucky.
The films namesake, Pickle, was a fish born without the ability to swim. He
spent his existence propped up in a sponge to keep him from sinking to the
bottom of the aquarium. Pickle was lovingly tended to, along with an obese
chicken, a cat with a heart condition, a non-buoyant goose, and a paraplegic
possum that fancied scrambled eggs for dinner.
Pickle explores the human capacity to care for all creatures throughout their
sometimes greatly protracted lives until their occasionally sudden and
unfortunate deaths.