A word of caution: if you are considering doing something drastic like leaving your normal life behind for a year to pursue a dream, know ahead of time that it will change you. This means that when you return from your pursuit, you may not be able to return to life exactly as it was. Rest assured though, the changes will make you a better person, you will likely be happier than you were before, just know that you will change. Layer on top of that, the fact that a year is a long time, a lot can happen in a year – even if you weren’t off pursuing a dream. Things so significant that nobody would have even thought of that occurring (okay maybe Bill Gates, but unless you hang out with him regularly, you wouldn’t know).
So here we find ourselves in July, back at home, trying to figure out what life looks like for us now that the adventure is complete. Our kids are going through the same challenges. They’re craving a sense of normalcy in their lives, and perhaps a sense of purpose, which brings me to what I really wanted to talk about, the recent lesson we had in loss as we said goodbye to our pet hamster. I wanted to start with that so you know where the story is going – it’s not the sort of surprise ending you want to leave for readers.
Now I first need to defend our competency as pet care-givers, because it would be easy with this story to assume the opposite. First, we have a dog, he is 14.5 years old (that’s old for a dog). Our dog spent 8 months living with a wonderful family while we were away and has since returned home and settled back in with us showing no signs of stopping. Next, we have a betta fish in its 4th year now and this is the second one we’ve had that lived that long. Point being, we have a few data points that suggest at least a modest level of competency at keeping animals alive, which is why it was a real blow when Hammy the Hamster only survived with us for 2 months.
Maybe I should go back a little further though. While we were travelling, we more or less homeschooled our kids. Some things just flowed from the experience (geography, social studies), while others need a more specific effort (math, reading/writing). To tackle the subjects needing a bit more effort, we encouraged our kids to take on “Passion Projects”. These were opportunities for them to pick a subject, research it and if it made sense, integrate the subject into their lives (which often meant buying something). For example, Owen was immensely curious about Swiss Army knives. He spent a whole month learning about the history, development, brands and features of these nifty tools. When we went to Geneva, he had a chance to go to the Victorinox flagship store and pick out his very own knife. These projects worked for the kids because they had a sense of ownership over the subject and a drive to learn all about it.
Which brings us to hamsters. These little rodents are an introductory pet for many children. They are relatively easy to care for, don’t take up a lot of space and have a low barrier to entry (if you buy a cage, the store will sometimes give you the hamster for free). Starting sometime in late 2019, our kids jointly started to research hamsters and quickly became fixated on getting one when we came home. The idea took on several iterations, evolving from hamster to guinea pig to chinchilla, to a new puppy, but eventually (thanks largely to the math component – they were required to pay for this pet with their weekly savings of a few dollars), it all settled back to hamsters. The project went relatively silent through March and part of April, but when the prospect of returning home during pandemic times really settled on all of us, the idea of having a distraction as simple as a hamster seemed something we could handle. So it was that we came to bring Hammy the Hamster into our lives.
Hammy was a very cute dwarf hamster and as I mentioned, when we bought the cage, the pet store gave us the hamster for free (tells you something about the profit margin on cages!) We brought him home and got him all set up in his new cage. The kids were able to hold him and take him out of the cage to play – things were off to a good start, but like any good story, that was when things started to change.
Our first challenge was the fact that our dog – all 14.5 years of him, who is mostly deaf and going blind, still has a great sense of smell. Oh, and he’s mostly Wheaten Terrier – breed function: catching vermin. So quickly we had to build a fence around the area with Hammy’s cage to prevent any incidents. This worked well enough, the hamster was contained and life moved forward until one day… I was speaking to one of the kids and noticed something moving on the floor behind them, “HAMMY!” I shouted, not really sure at who this was directed. We quickly recovered Hammy and returned him to the cage, confused as to how this little guy ended up running around the house but thankful that we found him before the dog did. Hammy was quick to share his new found skill with us and immediately returned to the lone spot in his cage (the latch at the access door) with a gap just large enough for him to squeeze through. He looked immensely proud of himself (as much as a hamster can express pride anyways).
Now this was in the middle of the day, during my first week of working in a new job (working from home because of course, there’s a pandemic going on). So I was forced to drop everything I was doing (WHMIS training) and go for a driving tour of the pet stores of our city, looking to see if any sold cages appropriate for a dwarf hamster. The pet store where we bought the cage sold it to us on the premise that it was suitable for said hamster, but that’s kind of a moot point now. Normally I seek the most efficient solution I can to problems, but not this day. This day I decided to head straight to the biggest pet store in town – that one in the big box store plaza, thinking they have so much inventory, surely they would have what I needed. They did not. I didn’t call ahead, I just started driving. This is also the furthest of 4 pet stores from our house. So I began my return trip home, checking each pet store along the way, only to find in the end that the store closest to our house (approximately 6 minutes by car) had just what I was looking for but at this point I’d been out for almost an hour, I guess I’ll write that off as my lunch break.
So Hammy now had his second new cage. Oh by the way, we also had a third cage for Hammy, it was free from a friend who no longer need it, but he figured out how to squeeze through the bars in that cage after about a week (while we were watching him), so it quickly went out of service and since it didn’t cost us anything, was easier to part ways with. So into his third cage, all seemed well for Hammy. But as you already know, the story doesn’t end there.
Around the same time as the new cage arrived, the summer heat was settling in. We don’t have air conditioning in our house so the day time temperature indoors was getting up close to 30 degrees. As it turns out, this is too hot for hamsters. Fortunately we realized this and moved him to the cool basement – his summer retreat. Whether it was the heat, or the smaller footprint of the cage, or some other factor we’ll never know, something started to cause Hammy stress. He discovered the running wheel in his new cage and at first we thought it was cute how much he enjoyed running in it. After almost 24 hours of constant running, eating, drinking and apparently no sleeping, it was clear that something was wrong. We decided to remove the wheel in an attempt to remove stimulation and help him get some sleep, in the process Hammy bit someone. This wasn’t the first time he bit, but for the number of times he had been handled, biting wasn’t normal. Wounds were cleaned up, egos rebuilt and Hammy finally settled down for a nap. We returned the wheel the next day and all seemed well again for a couple of days.
But then, it happened again… squeak, squeak squeak, the wheel didn’t stop turning, Hammy was again in a 24 hour ultra marathon. The order of events gets foggy here because I didn’t keep close tabs on it, but people were bitten several times. Hammy was taken from his cage into a larger play area to ensure he had a chance to move around, but the stress signals were growing. Pacing, running, something was bothering this hamster.
In the second week of July, the kids and I packed up and headed south to visit family. With the Pandemic restrictions lightening somewhat, it was exciting to go see some of our family we hadn’t seen since before our trip (some 10 months ago). Darla stayed at home to enjoy some peace and quiet for a few days and tended to the menagerie (Dog, fish, hamster). Unfortunately for her, this was the very day that things would go horribly wrong. Our drive was about 4 hours long. When I arrived, I sent her a quick text, “We’re here”, she replied immediately “Call me NOW”. Whoa, wonder what happened in the past 4 hours? Apparently what happened was that our stressed, perpetual motion hamster got his leg stuck in a feature of his cage called the “hanging nest” (picture a woven ball with an opening for the hamster to crawl through). Upon realizing what happened, Darla initiated a rescue mission. After being bitten, she found leather gloves and a variety of tools and successfully extricated Hammy from the nest, but he was in bad shape. Both legs were bleeding and his torso suffered abrasion from his efforts to get free (efforts that may well have worsened his plight). He appeared to be recovering, but the trauma and possibly internal injuries were too much for the little guy. He made it through the night, but was largely inactive the next day. The second night was to be his last. Now to tell the kids – we left your hamster for two days and in that time, he died. I was direct about it, explained what happened, how mommy tried really hard to save him, but the injuries were too much for his little body and he just couldn’t survive. They handled it well. Initially, they were nonchalant, later in the day, some tears were shed but together we regrouped and came to terms with the reality of life with small rodents.
And that is Hammy’s story… sort of. A week after that fateful afternoon, we have a new hamster in our house: Peanut. We don’t know if Peanut is male or female, but the kids have elected to refer to Peanut as “she”. In that regard, “she” is a full size hamster (not dwarf), this means “she” can live in the original cage we bought for Hammy. It has more space for “her” to run around. There is no hanging nest in this cage (there will never be a hanging nest in our house again!). “She” is very shy but we are working with that. Everyone is on pins and needles, concerned about sudden changes in behaviour, the weather or anything that might cause added stress. Things will be very interesting now, either Peanut will have a long happy life in our house (2-3 year life expectancy), or if she has an unexpectedly short life, this could be the end of rodents living in our house by choice.
Like everyone though, we’re working at getting back to some kind of normal both with the pandemic and our post-trip transition. It’s the second half of July now. September (traditional back-to-school season) is 7 weeks away and nobody knows what’s going to happen. Uncertainty has been a part of our life for over a year now. Life is happening everyday so we’re trying to embrace it rather than waiting around for the future. We checked off a lot of goals over the past year so it’s time for us to find some new ones, but also to enjoy the great Canadian summer while it’s here because it always ends in the blink of an eye. Hopefully I don’t have anymore hamster stories for a while but maybe I’ll be able to transition from our travel blog into something new since we won’t be travelling again for a while.