Hamster Girl?

 I was born and raised a mouse girl like my mother before me. I've had a dozen and a half pet mice throughout my life. I have been known to stop and sit, just watching the mice, when I'm at a pet store. As I write this, I am wearing mouse slippers. 

The last time I went to a store to get a couple of mice, though, I left with a hamster instead. 

I've had two other hamsters in my life, both when I was an early teen, and I honestly didn't do a great job of hamster care with either. So, for a long time, I thought I was just...not good for hamsters. 

And honestly? Maybe I'm not. It feels arrogant at best and naive at worst to claim that I excel at, or even am equipped to, caring for another life. So, seven months ago, when my wife and I turned down the small pet aisle of the pet store in town, I wouldn't have guessed that we'd be leaving the shop with a hamster in hand. 

A few tanks away from the mice, though, we stopped in our tracks at a hamster, alone and wearing a rut along the wall of his cage as he raced and paced, panicked, from side to side. We watched in horror as he ran back and forth endlessly, anxiously. 

"What do we do?" we whispered to one another. 

A few days before, my darling mouse, Thistle, passed away which left her sister, Ghost, alone. We had planned to pick up two or three mice who could live in their own cage and, hopefully, eventually be introduced to and live alongside Ghost. Taking this hamster home would prevent that and would mean Ghost would likely have to live out the rest of her life alone. 

I honestly still don't know what the right choice was. 

It was clear, though, that this hamster was in complete distress. 

"I'm not good at taking care of hamsters," I told my wife. "I never managed to keep one alive for longer than a year." 

"You were a child," they replied. 

There are a lot of people who know about small animals' care and health. Maybe some areas are populated with vets and ethical breeders, maybe even some specialty stores, but that's not the case in Kansas City. The nearest breeders are about four hours away. About 1 in every 4 vets in our area has a doctor who will see "exotics," and about 1 in every 4 of those is actually able to see them, and some of those just seem to be cat and dog vets who will glance at a mouse and refer to a book. 

This is just to say, the sixteen year-olds working at Petco or PetSmart or Petland or Pets'R'Us, aren't always equipped with a wealth of knowledge on little guys. I probably shouldn't have been surprised that the answers pet store staff supplied me with about this little hamster didn't provide me with any real clarity. A few years before, after all, staff at another pet store assured me that a pre-pubescent, genetically male mouse was definitely female (they were not). Still, I found a long-haired seventeen year old with an easy gate at the front and he followed me back to the small mammals. 

"Is this normal for this hamster?" I asked. 

"Pretty much," he nodded. "He's either doin' that or sleepin'." 

"Does he get handled ever?" I asked. 

"Uh, sometimes. Like, when the cage is getting cleaned he might get held a bit," he replied. 

"And how is he when he's held?" I asked. 

"Pretty much just like that." 

My wife and I frowned at one another. This little hamster was very clearly distressed and, it seemed, his distress wasn't abnormal for him. Rather, that little hamster was apparently distressed every moment he was awake. It would be hubris to believe we could fix things for him. We are, after all, just a couple of people. But then again, it would naive to assume someone else would come along and feel compelled to try to do the fixing. This is, I think, one of the great human dilemmas. Sometimes, we know something is wrong, but we don't feel equipped to right it...but we're also not sure that someone else will be willing to try to right it. 

In this instance, we figured we were equipped enough. Technically, we had the space, and a cage, and the ability to Google. 

So, we took home a little hamster. 

He is exceptionally cute: 

The thing about hamsters is that they're tunnelers...and the thing about pet stores is that they are stores. So, shops try to keep expenses low. Which is to say, at the pet store, this little guy just a light smattering of bedding. We got him set up with a wealth of deep bedding he could tunnel through. 

Hamsters typically live in warm, dry areas. Our little guy, Huckleberry, is a Roborovski dwarf hamster. Roborovskis are native to desert regions in Central Asia. Which is to say: these guys are used to sand.  It is recommended that, in captivity, they have access to sand to mimic their natural habitat and allow them to bathe. At the pet shop, there wasn't any sand in his cage, but we were able to get him a little sand bath station set up and he loves it. He rolls around in it. He digs around in it. He hides in it when he's feeling stressed or nervous or lightly sleepy. 

Like most rodents, hamsters instinctually avoid open spaces, favoring dark corners, cozy burrows, and little hideaways. He had been supplied with a hideaway, but only one, and it was quite a bit bigger than him. That, combined with how very little bedding he'd been given, likely increased his nervousness. At our house, his cage is outfitted with a hanging, flannel, strawberry hideout, the little cactus, a couple of toilet paper tubes, a cardboard hideout, and a little wooden bridge along with lots of bedding. This way, he has ample places to hide. He has enhanced some of his hideouts to make them extra hide-y. He tore a hole in the lining of his strawberry so if he wants extra privacy he can crawl into the lining. He also filled any spaces on his bridge with bedding so that he is better hidden when he's beneath it. 

This is all to say, I am not nearly arrogant enough to claim I have provided little Huckleberry with the best life he could possibly have. Especially not when, in the wild, Roborovskis are known to tunnel six feet into the ground to create their burrows and are known to run six miles a night. All I can offer Huckleberry is a wheel and an abundance of soft bedding. Still, I know that his life is better with me than it was when he was at the pet store. 

Robos are extremely cute and very fun to observe. They are not, however, cuddly or super fun to hold. They are nervous and very very fast. 

The first day we brought Huckleberry home, as soon as I opened the little cardboard carrier case he was sent with us in, he got away from me. I dropped to my knees, looking under furniture to find him, and eventually heard my wife calling out from the bathroom where he'd run in on them. They managed to trap him in an empty trash can and we got him safely into his house. For the next several days, any handling of him I did, I did with my hands still in the cage. 

Wikipedia very diplomatically cautions potential Robo owners, "They are best suited to life as merely observational creatures," because their "increased activity levels" lead to "decreased ease of handling." 

I do still handle him every day or two, but only very briefly, and usually still standing right next to his cage in case he gets a little squirmy. He seems pretty used to me by now, though. 

Still, the other night, to my terror, I lost him while cleaning his cage. 

I had placed him in a box that held some of his used bedding that I set aside to reintroduce to his cage after it is cleaned and the rest of the bedding is replaced. The first time I cleaned his cage, I didn't do this. Rather, I tossed all of his used bedding, sand, and cage liners, and replaced it all. He was absolutely frantic when he was placed in the freshly cleaned cage. Desperately, he dug at the sides of his cage, with a fervor that matched the pacing he had done at the pet store. My wife recommended that I put back some of the old bedding that he could smell himself on. I did, it calmed him, and from then on I made sure to always save a few handfuls of his old bedding to intersperse with new, fresh bedding. 

So, the other night, like every other time I cleaned his cage, he was in a box with old bedding. I put pap er down, lining the bottom of his cage, and then went to get a handful of old bedding to scatter across it. The bedding was still in the box, but my hamster was not. 

As previously mentioned, hamsters are little burrowers. So, I rifled through the whole box of used bedding: he was not there. He was not outside of the box, either. He was not in his little strawberry, or his cactus sand bath, or under his wooden bridge, or beneath his wheel. Frantically, I put everything in his cage. I looked in the trash bag that held the lining, bedding, and sand I was disposing of. 

All of the fear that I felt the first time I lost him came back threefold. Now, I knew him. I loved him so much more than I did the first time I met him. Now, I was confident I could give him a good life, if an imperfect one. Also? A couple of months after his first escape, and a couple of months before this one, we had acquired two cats. 

I was panic-stricken. I tried calling out to my wife, afraid to open the door in case our dogs and cats were nearby. I tried calling my wife, on the phone, from the other room, as I twisted everything that was on the same shelf where Huckleberry had been to see if he'd made his way into the dollhouse I had repurposed as a jewelry box or was hiding behind a lamp. My wife came in the room, concerned, and, sobbing, I said, "I lost Huckleberry." 

They put the dogs outside and the cats in the basement. When they returned to our bedroom, I was on my knees, pulling things out from the bookshelf. 

It was a complete relief when I moved out a box and found him. As previously mentioned, Robos can run really fast, and are known for running long distances. They are also very quiet. The first time I lost him, he was out of the room within five minutes, and with me having hardly had time to peer under a chair and search under a desk. This time, though, I suspect he hadn't been trying to get away at all. I think, more likely, he got out of the box, looked around, and slipped back behind the bookshelf. So, when I reached out, he let me scoop him up and move him back into his cage without a problem. 

The differences between Huckleberry and the mice that I've had are surprising--they don't seem like they would be that different. I've noticed mice seem to be pretty intentional. They study things. They have objectives. They can problem solve. I don't know what goes on in any of their minds, of course, but observationally, it seems like Huckleberry acts without thinking. He just seems to speed along from place to place without much purpose. 

They have physical differences that make sense with consideration to their natural habitats. Huckleberry is extremely lightweight, and he has a coat that would have him blending in with the sand from a bird's eye view. He, of course, have pockets in his cheeks that he stuffs with seeds when foraging. He also has a scent gland on his belly which excretes an oily substance used in the wild to mark territory or communicate with other hamsters. By contrast, every male mouse I've had has just constantly peed. 

One of the most surprising differences I've discovered, though, is that they tend to slip more than mice do. Mice have little ridges on their paws that make them good at gripping and climbing. By contrast, Huckleberry's paws are designed more like shovels. They're good for speed and they're good for digging. Likely, this works well with the dessert terrain they evolved in. Unfortunately, it means he is also more likely to fling himself off his plastic wheel, slip along a solid surface, and, apparently, slide back behind a bookshelf. 

Anyway. I know there wasn't much of a point to this blogpost but...

Well, I'm always going to be a mouse girl. But maybe I'm just a little bit of a hamster girl these days, too.