As I'm typing this, a hamster sits beside the computer in a Blowfish shoe box. It's really quite an amazing story about how it got there. A few days before Christmas, one of my professors suggested I get Ethan, my 4-year-old, a hamster or pet for Christmas. I went to Pet Lover's, later called Pet Haters by a few people I know, to get a beta fish and ended up with both a beta and a hamster because as an adult who never had a hamster as a child, I felt like having a hamster would be fun for me as well. However, going into this I fully realized I would be completely in charge of this hamster as Ethan cannot care for a pet by myself.
Ethan was so excited to receive his hamster Christmas morning and donned the name Charlie for him. But the real surprise came three days later when Charlie, the apparently girl, had eight babies. I walked in on Monday morning and poof, eight little pink jelly beans sat in the midst of the hamster bedding, wheel and food. They didn't have open eyes or fur and were quite revolting. When my friend Andy asked how they were doing, I announced them to be healthy and that Charlie was being a good mom (because I'd heard hamsters eat their babies which would be a weird thing to explain to Ethan), to which Andy replied, "Drown them!" Honestly, I'd thought about it and was quite disappointed in my single-mother hamster (the little skank), though I'm quite the same situation in a completely different, non-animalistic way.
As the hamster grew, they became more tolerable though quickly filled up the cage, driving Charlie crazy. She escapes a few times a day in her hamster ball, running around the room and relieving all the pressure of being a mom. Until this week, I had all eight in one cage, but slowly I'm sending them to their own homes, and I have six left, including the little guy sitting in front of me. He's headed home with my friend T. Bolger tonight as a surprise for his son Thomas. I really can't wait until this whole deal is finito and I can rest assured knowing Charlie has no other hamster to eat. It haunts me nightly that I'll wake up one morning and there will be a blood-bath of hamster flesh and bone sprayed all over the cage. Let this nightmare be over quickly!
p.s. included are some pics of Ethan from Christmas break. Ones of him being silly and one of him and Uncle Darren.
dear shirley,
ReplyDeletethank you for using the phrase "little pink jellybeans."
as i'm typing this, nixie, the hamster you gave me, is rolling around in her ball.
she is still very sweet, despite her delivery to my house that was, how should i put this, traumatic, to say the least.
wait till you see how i fixed up her cage.
-tait
*the pics of ethan are precious ;-)
"It haunts me nightly that I'll wake up one morning and there will be a blood-bath of hamster flesh and bone sprayed all over the cage."
ReplyDeleteLove it.
I would honestly recommend Wordpress over Blogger though. I've used both and I like Wordpress much better.