At an airport recently I caught a glimpse of a hamster, or maybe it was a gerbil, on a poster with its wheel. It was a metaphor for the human habit of continuously circling with no where to go. I found the image a bit unsettling; though, it reminded me of one of the funniest stories that my immediate family shares. I believe this is one of Ma H’s favorites too, and yes it has everything to do with hamsters, or was it gerbils?
I was in the 8th grade. My mother, Aimie and I were somewhere and they had hamsters for sale. After a double team by Aimie and me, Ma H caved in and bought one for me. On the ride home I was happily getting to know my little, furry friend. I put my finger through the hole to introduce myself and was met with several jagged little teeth that easily pierced my flesh.
I screamed and shook my finger spraying the interior of the mini van and Aimie with blood. This was not starting well at all.
We got home and after I washed my finger and bandaged it up I began to construct a home for my violent, furry friend. This was enjoyable because I loved to build things at that age. While I constructed his cage I had visions of a plastic tubing fortress built with multi-leveled chambers connected by rodent runways spanning the length of my room.
The experience worked out so well that Ma H agreed to allow me to expand the population by two more. They were all the same sex because I wanted to avoid any reproducing; I had heard that the young were in danger of being consumed by one or both of their parents once born or something horrific like that. To accommodate the growing population I went out and bought one of those elaborate plastic hamster mansions with the plastic tubes and connectors. My vision was starting to come together.
One morning soon after the construction was completed, Ma H woke me up by saying that one of the hamsters had been found in the dryer. He was alive, just trapped. I still have no idea how he got down there since the basement was where the laundry facilities were and he had somehow managed to descend three floors. I scooped him up and found that he had chewed through one of the plastic connectors. I searched the village for the rest of the inhabitants only to find that they too had decided to join in the exodus. I had one of three. Ma H asked if the others had escaped as well and I told her that they had not. I then went to my brother to inform him of the situation. He offered no help since he was denied access to the hamsters or anything to do with them.
I went to school that day thinking over and over where they could have gone and also wondering why in the Sam Hill the manufacturer created such a shitty product. It was designed for hamsters, but on the first try the little bugger chewed right through it like it was cardboard.
I arrived home and I searched and searched until it was time for dinner with no luck. Mid way through dinner, during a quiet moment in the conversation, I noticed both my parents exchange a look of bewilderment. It took me a moment to figure out what the looks were about. There was a scratching sound that seemed to be coming from the ceiling. I looked at my brother. He matched my look with the same degree of concern and panic. We knew what the scratching was. Somehow the refugees had managed to find their way in between the floor of the upstairs and the ceiling of the kitchen where we were now eating our pork chops and trying to mask our panic.
After dinner, Carmen and I devised a plan. There was no way that we could get to the space beneath us, but our cats could. This was very unnerving as we wanted to avoid bloodshed and rescue the little guys from beneath our feet.
We sent Harvey in. Harvey was the most docile of our three cats. He never brought home mangled corpses and never seemed to want to kill anything; the other two were a different story and were not allowed upstairs during Operation Habitrail.
Harvey went in and under quite happily as Carmen and I waited anxiously hoping that our parents had dismissed the sound to a bird or something; we lived in the country so the concept of a stray critter somewhere in the house was pretty standard fare.
After about three minutes of biting our nails and thinking the worst we received confirmation of contact. The confirmation came in the form a high pitched scream that we only assumed came from the frightened floor dweller. We had a hand held mirror that we rigged up so we could see down the length of the plank with aid from a heavy duty flashlight.
I wedged myself in the crawlspace, arranged my surveillance gear and saw Harvey calmly looking at the dusty creature standing on his hind legs screaming. I had no idea that hamsters could utter such a shriek, but they can and he did.
Remarkably the flashlight attracted him like a moth. He scurried by Harvey, who was looking rather confused, right up to my flashlight and into the palm of my hand. Success! Carmen and I now had our plan in order. We would use Harvey to track down the last hamster, listen for the shriek and use the light to attract him back to camp. The only foreseeable flaw would be if we couldn’t get to where we needed to be. Luckily that was not the case; he was only five planks over in the floor of Carmen’s room.
Operation Habitrail was a success. Harvey was awarded with corn on the cob for his gallantry and all the hamsters were returned to base a little dirty, but otherwise unharmed. Unfortunately, that was the end of my vision. The small city I had built was broken into angry pieces and the inhabitants were relocated to a slum of wire cages.
Years later we told our parents of our evening of search and rescue and their reply was…
“You Little Shits!”
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