the wheels are turning

2003-06-24 - 10:51 a.m.

When I was growing up, we had a dog, two cats and a long string of hamsters, one at a time. Hamsters were only one at a time because my parents were smart enough to know that if we got two, no matter how confident the guy at the pet store was that he gave you two females, you'd wind up with countless tiny pink hamsterlets piling one upon the other and giving the harshest of nature lessons by being eaten by their own mothers. Two males would fight and eat each other, so that was also out. I preferred my hamsters to just eat their fat green pellets, birdseedy stuff and maybe gnaw on the end of a dog bone or a carrot now and again. We'll ignore the fact that hamsters often eat their own poop since they don't have very good digestion. Some things a kid doesn't really want to think about.

The problem with only having one hamster at a time is that sometimes you choose the wrong one. I had my heart set on a golden hamster. All I'd had were ones that were splotched white, brown and grey. The goldens stood out in the cages at the pet store. They looked special. I wanted special. So, after the death of yet another splotchy hamster, I went off to the pet store and there was a golden! At last! He was beautiful! He was soft! And he was the most genetically weak little hamster on the planet.

It's shocking how many things can go wrong with one little critter. Of course they all require veterinary care that costs many times what the hamster himself cost in the first place. His eyes swelled up, he smelled bad, he shivered and stayed curled in his fluff for days. He never played. He never ran in his little wheel. He was either sick or depressive, but I think probably both. I guess I'd be depressed if I smelled that bad too. He was thoroughly boring. I wanted back my old splotchy hamsters I could set loose amongst the Barbies like a wild animal was attacking them. I wanted him to run through cardboard wrapping paper tubes and get lost under my bed like so many that had come before him. He'd just snuffle and raise his one huge and wrinkly eye at me, then go back to sleep.

Hamsters that didn't make it would disappear from the cage during the day while I was at school. I don't remember ever asking to have a big funeral in the backyard for them. I didn't really think about what happened to them when they disappeared. They were just gone and Mom would leave the cleaned habitrail to drip dry. Then back to the pet store we'd go. When I finally discovered that they met their end in a white plastic trash bag I was horrified to find that life was so disposable. I had no alternate ideas for body bags or their final resting place, but it seemed a grim way to go.

The healthiest hamster I ever had lasted for two and a half years. That's pretty ancient for most hamsters. After the fiasco with the sickly golden, I chose my next hamster not by looks, but by finding the most active one in the store. I named him Bugsy. Bugsy was healthy alright, and he was the meanest little rodent around. He bit any hand that got near him. He ran in his wheel all night long and made a screaming sound so loud that he often got his cage carried into the spare room for the night so he could scream to his heart's content behind closed doors. We secretly prayed for a tiny little heart attack. I was convinced that Bugsy wasn't really a hamster, but actually a gerbil with his tail cut off. A hamster just couldn't have been that vile.

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