Hamster Art

When I was (how old was I? I don't remember) some undetermined age, I decided I wanted to get a pet hamster like I'd had when I was younger. My grandma said she'd let me pick one for my birthday. At the pet store, I asked, "Is it a boy or a girl?" The store employee picked up the hamster, took a look at its parts, and said, "It will be a boy."

Will be? How strange. And how strange that we didn't really ask for an explanation.

That hamster was easy to name. He became Wilby.

A few weeks later, rushing out the door to piano lessons, I glanced into Wilby's cage. To my surprise, there were things that looked like maggots in the corner of the cage. My first thought was that I had just cleaned the cage and it couldn't have possibly bred maggots that quickly. Then I realized the wiggly pink things were hamster babies.

Wilby was called Wilbyetta after that.

I don't even remember what we did with the babies, but Wilbyetta produced quite the second brood later. Watching those babies grow was fascinating. I learned about separating parents and babies and did so by building elaborate walls for the many-leveled cage I owned. I loved watching their shading develop, and I even recognized personalities. Most memorable was the tiny one I named Boo. He would always get so scared when I opened the cage that he would cower in a corner, holding his paws in shaking fists. (Boo ended up belonging to my next-door neighbor, who loved him until the day he died of cancer. Really. Cancer.)

After the second brood, though, two things happened: there were more babies than we knew what to do with, and an obnoxious and seemingly strategic comment about the smell of hamsters given by a classmate one morning made me a little hesitant about my hamster hobby.

My family joked about giving the babies to someone with a snake. I think my mom was finally the kind one who asked the elementary school teachers if any of them would like to have a class pet.

All of this background information is so you can look at only a tiny sampling of the thank-you notes I received from the elementary school kids. Before I finally toss them, I had to share some of them with you so you can appreciate the cute things kids say and their awesome artistic skills.





(Than cuw=thank you, get it?)




(What an evil-looking, but tired hamster!)




(I just really liked this one.)




(So the teacher told the kids about the horrible ending the hamster might have faced. But isn't that a just-having-eaten lump on that snake? And why is there a dog but no hamster in sight?)



(Nice drawing! And you've gotta love the "hole" instead of "whole.")