Growing up, my family always had a dog. And because my brother and I wanted our own pets to care for, we each had hamsters too.
I’m still unclear on the appeal of these little creatures, but it could have had something to do with the fact that they were small, furry, and they allowed me to be a 10 year old badass. I can probably trace this back to one of my first acts of rebellion - choosing a pet in large part because I knew it would irritate my mother.
My first hamster, Potsie, (named for the character on Happy Days, of course) lived a long, happy life, dying ultimately from an inner ear infection. I attempted to nurse him back to health with an eye dropper of medicine each day, but found him stiff as a board in his cage less than a week after his diagnosis. My dad buried him in a tennis ball can underneath a tree outside my window.
My second hamster didn’t live nearly as glorious a life. Olivia lasted only a few months before she scaled the top of her squeaky wheel and broke out of her cage like she was Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. Unfortunately, unlike Clint and that successful escape, she made a wrong turn and ended up crawling into the baseboards and dying in the wall. Decaying hamsters smell absolutely horrible.
Zoom ahead a few decades, and my mini-me daughter decided about she wanted a hamster. I caved easily, remembering the joy Potsie once brought me. I also thought it would teach her responsibility. I was wrong. She lost interest in helping me clean that cage every Saturday morning after week two, declaring simply, “Dudley’s cage smells weird.” No shit, Gianna. At the end of the day, Mommy had a new hamster named Dudley that lived in Gia’s room. I’m sure my mom was chuckling, thinking, “payback is a bitch, Chris.”
Dudley had a pretty good life. Unlike 70’s era hamsters who lived in rectangular tanks with metal wheels, cedar shavings and maybe a toilet paper roll for fun if they were lucky, millennial hamsters reside in phat habitats. Dudley lived in a multi-story, multi-colored unit. The “bedding” comes in multiple color choices, and various levels of puffiness. There are different varieties of food, and other an insane number of toy options for them. Thankfully, Dudley was low maintenance and was quite content with his standard issue wheel and basic needs.
When Gia did take interest in Dudley, it was typically when we fed him. We loved to watch him pick out his favorite items out of his sunflower seed medley mix, and jam as much as possible into his cheek pouches before he’d make the trek upstairs in his hamster condo, dump his stash into a hole, and then go back and repeat the process. I’m not sure who he thought was going to steal these seeds, but he was maniacal about it. So Gia got a fun idea about feeding him.
She thought if he liked “special items,” like the dried corn pieces in his mix, than he might like something fresh, like a piece of apple, for example. So one night after dinner, she cut off a little piece of her Granny Smith and put it into his cage. We both marveled at how fast he pounced on it and gobbled it up. We then said goodnight to Dudley, I tucked Gia in, and all was ok. Or so I thought.
I woke the next morning and went downstairs in the dark with my dog to let him out. He stopped in the front hall, sniffing at something on the floor. I couldn’t figure out what he was going nuts over - so I switched on the light, and there I found Dudley. Dead on the first floor.
Apparently Dudley decided to do a Peter Pan leap off my second floor. The best I can retrace his last moments, this adventurous little guy was on a sugar high from the apple. He escaped from his cage, and survived the drop from his condo on top of Gia’s dresser to her carpeted floor. Things got ugly when he then scampered out of her room, and headed towards the hallway. He made a stop in the hallway overlooking first floor entrance way, got curious, and thought he could fly. He could not.
Not wanting to traumatize my daughter with the “Dudley is dead” news, we had a brief parental conversation about next steps. We decided to sneak the dead little guy back into his house and leave him there to make him appear as if he was sleeping. I would tell Gia when she got home from school that he died in his sleep.
I had removed him by the time she got home (for the life of me, I can’t remember what we did with him, which is really disturbing) and I sat down to tell her what happened. Like with most bits of bad news, she was unfazed, she met the announcement of her pet’s death with “poor Dudley.” And that was that. No tears, no drama.
When I told her a few months ago the “real story,” she laughed. She was grateful she wasn’t the one who found him dead, but thought it was funny he tried to “fly.” Most adults laugh at the “hamster who thought he was Peter Pan” story, but I wasn’t sure if my kid would. I can’t decide if she is truly the most well adjusted kid ever, as she takes almost every piece of news in stride, or if she is just a little twisted. Maybe both. EIther way, this is definitively my kid.
This weekend she asked if she could get another hamster. Fantastic.
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