[mikatelyn]

Thanks for all the moral support and information! It's really helpful to read about everyone's tips and experiences.
I talked to the girl at Petco who sold him to me. She said they tend to get the hamsters at 8-10 weeks, but he had some kind of scrape on the top of his head so she had kept him in the back to make sure he healed up ok, and she thinks Smokey was there about a month before I bought him. So best guess, he was 3-3.5 months old when I got him, but it was probably another 3 weeks before I started trying to tame him in the bathtub, although I'd been regularly handling him (I've had him almost 2 months now). I was just lucky that he's not a biter, because based off of some of the other threads I've been reading on here, any other hamster and I probably would be missing a finger!

I'm glad to report he has not exhibited the zombie hammie behavior since I started both scatter feeding and providing more hiding places. He goes through a few minutes of wake up time, where he's more shy, but then will climb on my hand, so he's still making steady progress.

As for his nest, I just realized this morning that he's moved out of his tunnels and into the magazine holder under his wheel, so I hope this means when I clean his tunnels he doesn't go back into hamster shock!

I'm not sure if maybe he's starting to bond a little. I've constructed a makeshift play pen out of shelving boards on the sofa (see picture) so we can watch TV, and if he gets startled he'll run and sit right next to me, about 1- 2 inches away from my hip. And every once in a great while he'll get a little cuddly. He'll sit still or even nestle into the crook of my arm and look almost a little sleepy, and let me pet him for maybe 1 minute... which for him is like an eternity!