A Hamster’s Wheel

December 23, 2007 - 3:45 PM by Stephanie

Growing up, ours was a “dog, aquarium & cat” household. My parents didn’t go in for trying out more farm or exotic pet varietals like chicks or gerbils or rabbits or iguanas.

Except for a stint in the 11th grade when I had a whole slew of mice. But that was for an advanced biology experiment measuring the effects of caffeine on them and once that was finished, so were they. (MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA)

Brian at This Normal Life blogs about the educational experience of taking on hamster pet care with teenage daughter Meirav and the things they learned…

14-year-old Merav has had hamsters for a year and a half now. We started with just one, a male, but Merav felt he’d be lonely, so we got him a companion, a female. We thought it would be educational to have little hamster babies. And so it was the first time. Merav went positively ga-ga when Mazie the mother started squeezing out these tiny pink little peanut shaped critters. The babies, blind and unable to crawl, let alone walk, squirmed and nursed and were as adorable as little rodents can be.

When Mazie started to eat the runts, however, Merav had a different reaction.

It gets much better.

Think twice before bringing home a couple of those cute, fuzzy little things. After all, they are, as Brian puts it, incestuous (and cannibalistic) rodents.

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