A rescue hamster's tale....

[babyboos]

Rescue Hamster

by Ros Jones

"We've run out of Syrians," I said to my husband. "There's a hamster show in the Community Centre on Saturday, see if you can get a longhaired one."



Secretly, I was hoping to replace Sheba, an enthusiastic black female of whom I'd been particularly fond. I don't know if the longhaireds really are more intelligent and friendly than the shorthaireds, or if they just look that way because of the hair.



Jeremy came back from the show with Tinker, a full-grown longhaired female, who, they told him, was a rescue hamster. I was appalled. How could anyone want to end the life of such a healthy creature? Her thick fur is a rich tan colour, her limbs are muscular, her eyes bright. The only visible flaw is a nick in her ear, but that may have been caused by her mother. We once had a dwarf which insisted on cropping one ear of each of her babies presumably so she'd know they were hers!



Within hours of arrival in our house, Tinker had established her credentials: chewing a corner off the piece of cardboard acting as a temporary roof and hauling herself out of the tank we'd put her in while we got a cage ready. She's a big hamster, very muscular under the fluff, though Syrians always look as if someone sewed them up in a furry bag and they managed to push their feet out at the corners. She's also obviously intelligent. She investigated her new cage immediately, looking for ways out She looked in the roof first, apparently accustomed to exiting that way, but once she found the open door in the side she soon plopped out onto the carpet.



Her first forays were cautious, hiding under the furniture and running low to the ground. However she was soon doing what our other Syrians did: climbing up the fireplace, the back of the radiator, our legs, to get onto the armchairs, and staring quizzically at the TV.



Hamsters don't seem to mind television. I thought they wouldn't like the sudden noises, but they seem to ignore them. Also, of course, when the telly's on, we're in the room, so it's worth waking up and looking out for tit-bits. The only thing they really didn't like was the Gulf War. Whenever we had that on they all stayed in their nests.





It didn't take Tinker long to work out that the lounge is just a large cage. She could sniff the draught under the skirting board in the corner behind the telly, so that was where she began her escape bid. Unfortunately the carpet was cheap, just tufts glued onto sacking. She soon had the corner off it, but was no nearer escaping. That was when she discovered the door. It has a sizeable draught under it, so much so that we hung a red velvet curtain over it. The curtain provided Tinker with perfect cover. Evening after evening she worked on her project. Soon we had a hole in the carpet 18" x 2" beside the door and Tinker was sniffing freedom. However, the gap still wasn't wide enough. She could poke her nose under the door, but her whole head was too big. The door would simply have to go.



Turning her head upside down, she can get her nose far enough under the door to get purchase for her well-developed incisors. Soon, wood-chips joined the debris of carpet-tufts concealed behind the curtain. Slowly but surely - we'd had her three weeks at that point - she is bevelling the edge of our lounge door. We tell her not to - the grinding of her teeth makes it hard to hear the telly -but we all need a purpose in life, and hers is relatively innocuous



On Thursday 1st of May I went out to vote. I was only gone ten minutes, but someone managed to call on me, find me out, and shove a message through my letterbox 'Can't get through on the phone,' it said. With a sense of foreboding I picked up the phone. Dead. Surely we paid the bill? I rummaged. Yes, we did. Then it must be the wire.



We have a lot of wires in our house; it's on three floors, so we installed DIY extensions. If not hampered by rubber gloves or trousers round the ankles, we can get to a phone from any room in the house before the answering-machine cuts in. Providing, of course, that the phone rings in the first place.



I followed the phone-wire into the least accessible comer of the lounge - the one behind the record rack. I knew Tinker had been working there, too - she'd scented another draught. Sure enough, a neat 1/2" section of cable right in the corner had been stripped and the blue core removed. Not the green one, or the brown one, which serve no apparent purpose, but the blue one. I spent the rest of the morning finding a spare junction box from the DIY days, ripping up the cable so she couldn't chew any more of it, cutting myself on a Stanley knife, and telling Tinker firmly not to eat my telephone.



A drowsy Syrian, rising in slow motion from her nest, ears folded, eyes half-closed, is, of course, completely disarming. Ditto the slow and genteel way they accept the milk-drops you push through the bars - not at all like Ajax, the albino Campbell's on the shelf below, who snatches treats from you as if she's never been fed and takes your fingers, too, if they come within range. (And yes, she was named after the white tornado). So I didn't yell at her. I had the phone back on-line by one o'clock, and the wire draped over the furniture, out of her reach.



I began to think it might be safer just to open the door and let her explore the rest of the house. The first time I let her in the dining room, she snuffled around with innocent curiosity, not chewing anything. She takes only seconds to scamper up the stairs, but it's easy to catch her at the top and she doesn't seem to mind too much 'And why not?' I thought, 'Exposure to stimuli enhances brain development' but Tinker hadn't abandoned her plans for escape: she was lulling me into a false sense of security. The third time she was allowed in the dining room she found Horace's Hole.



Our central heating system was installed by cowboys. The holes they cut in the floorboards for the piping are generous, to say the least. It was Horace who first exploited the one in the dining room. He disappeared for twelve hours, being lured to the exit eventually by a dish of seeds. That was when we stopped letting dwarfs loose in the dining room, but Syrians don't fit down Horace's hole. Several have sniffed at if but even Sheba couldn't get her head through it. Tinker doesn't give in so easy. That whole floorboard is loose. It has no 'tongue', so there's about 1/8" of play in it. Tinker started to gnaw at the edge of the hole, found the board would slide sideways and pushed it. It was just enough.



Before my horrified gaze, her head disappeared. She had to wiggle a bit to get her hips through the hole, but soon the pink soles of her hind paws were waving me goodbye. Jeremy was not pleased. Eleven o'clock at night is not the best time for shifting furniture, lifting carpet, and taking up floorboards. We could hear her snuffling about among the rubble, but our calls were in vain. She was exploring. Jeremy worried that she'd chew an electric cable and set the house on fire. I worried that she'd play with the fibreglass lagging on the central heating pipes and get invisible splinters. We waited. After half an hour she approached the exit. Jeremy tried reaching down for her, but she wasn't having that. She didn't want to be caught, just to come out of the foundations - which turned out to be boring after all. Finally she reached her front paws out of the hole, grabbed the edge and did a mighty pull-up. As her nose broke the horizon, quickly followed by the rest of her, I understood her troubled past. It wasn't Tinker that needed rescuing, it was her owner.

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From an old Hamster Society journal - I couldn't resist sharing I like to dig my old literature out from time to time



Membership open to all young and old - just ask me for an application form: [email protected] or visit http://www.hamsoc.org.uk for more details.