The Hamster Incident

For most families hamsters are a nice experiment into pets. A harmless practice of taking care of another living thing.

I remember my first hamster, Egon. Yes it was in the Ghostbusters era and even at an early age I had a "thing" for science nerds. Egon was a teddy bear hamster that I would play with, take photos of, and make pictures for his cage. It was a great experience for me as a kid.

In my house hamsters have come to mean something else.

Last summer we bought the kids two dwarf hamsters, Hagrid and Curious. They were great .... for awhile. Curious was a bit easier to handle and the Bean especially loved to hold him and play with him. Then one day Curious had part of his ear missing. Hmmm ...... maybe they got into a tiff. I thoughts little of it. The a few days later his eye was scratched and swollen shut. This brought more alarm but then again they are hamsters. What am I going to do?

Then there was that sunny afternoon that the Bean came out to me and said "Mama, the hamster isn't moving and is laying in his cage like this." At which point she did the classic dead animal pose with the legs up in the air. My mental response was "Aw, shit." but my verbal response was "Ok honey, you stay here and I will go check on the hamster."

I went upstairs to peak in the cage and not only was the hamster dead but it's brain was eaten out. EWWWWW! (Although slightly fascinated by the fact I could see the inside of the hamsters skull.) As not to leave the corpse with the remaining hamster I put it in a yogurt cup to be disposed of later. The kids wanted a proper burial for their darling Curious.

Hagrid didn't get much love after that incident and died of natural causes a few months later.

Then were were on to Hamster Experience 2.0, what I was unaware of as my husband and children ventured off to get two more hamsters is that my savvy children would talk their dad into getting a male and a female hamster so they could start a business. (mind you my kids are 5 and 8 and my husband and I are already over committed to work and school - free time is not a luxury we are familiar with)

For awhile we were not positive that they were a female and a male. But just a few days before we were leaving for 10 days to Florida there were babies! It was alright timing as we could do nothing until they had fur. Fine, good ..... right? Well, upon our return from Florida the baby hamsters had fur but the momma hamster had MORE BABIES!!! *roll of the eyes*

Out of those two batches of babies three survived so we were housing 5 hamsters. We moved the known mom to her own cage but since I am not familiar with hamster sexing I procrastinated and in the end I paid the price.

Two nights ago I found another batch of babies in the hamster cage and upon further inspection it turns out TWO hamsters had litters at the same time! I removed the hamsters that I believed not to be the birthing mothers and was thankfully correct in my selection. So now we have the original mother in her own cage, the original father and one other hamster in another cage and the two recent birthing mothers in a cage with their off spring.

My husband is taking no responsibility of this breeding frenzy, claiming the children BEGGED him to get a male and a female for their business endeavor and it should be up to them to figure out what to do. Well, I don't buy it.

So anyone who wants a hamster they will be ready in two weeks for $5 each (and I may even pay someone $5 to take them!)

SAVE ME!!!