A Hamster Tale

by Beth Alexander Walsh

There have been many animal stories throughout my children’s lives. Dogs have always been center stage family members but other pets have been added to the mix. There have been fish, a frog, hermit crabs and a rabbit. We have even hatched chickens on our dining room table, but my middle daughter’s hamster phase and specifically her first hamster Josh, became family folklore.

Josh was an amiable hamster. He liked to be held, (although I refused to hold him), and he wasn’t loud on his wheel at night, a problem we would find with a subsequent hamster. Josh was also very patient. He was frequently wardrobed in Barbie attire because he habitually rode in a Barbie convertible and played in a Barbie dream house. He also tolerated our terrier mutt Sam’s nuzzling and rolling him in his hamster ball.

One day while I was putting away laundry, I heard screaming from our family room. I ran into the room to find my daughter crying and pointing up to the cathedral ceiling. Perched on the edge of a ceiling fan blade, a dozen feet in the air, was Josh with his little nose twitching as he stared down below. Apparently, my eldest daughter had been teasing her sister by throwing poor Josh up in the air and catching him. One of the tosses went too high and he never came down.

Being a Mom means being a champion for your child, which meant at that moment I was getting a ladder and touching my very first hamster. Josh and I survived the incident and we were all grateful that the ceiling fan had not be on and turning, else this story would have  a ghastly ending. We also found that Josh was not as patient after his fiasco. The first time my hamster tossing daughter was allowed to pick him up again, Josh bit her. It was the first and only time he had bitten anyone and none of us could blame him.

Josh lived to the ripe old age of two and a half, the longest of the five hamsters my daughter would come to own. We kept hoping to get another Josh but the second hamster was a hissing mean cur that everyone was afraid of. The third was dead the next day after we brought him home and we returned his deceased body to the pet store. The fourth hamster jumped on the hamster wheel as soon we put him in the cage and never got off, keeping us all awake at night. He died several months later with what we assume was exhaustion. After the fifth hamster passed away and his little hamster body was laid to rest in our little hamster graveyard, I convinced my daughter that maybe it was time to move on from hamster ownership. She had plenty of hamster tales to last a lifetime.