Snowshoes for a Hamster

Childhood pet experience #2

Childhood pets are great. It’s lovely to look back on the fun you had with them, how cute they were, the sadness when they died. Or were eaten. But that’s another story! It can teach children so much. Responsibility. Dedication. Unconditional love. Organisation. How to deal with grief and loss.

I loved animals when I was a child. I just wanted a fluffy something to hold and love. As I grew older, it was dogs that became my obsession. But before the dogs, I had a hamster. This is extremely unusual for an Australian child, as there aren’t any hamsters in Australia. Lots of other little fluffy animals, but no hamsters. (Although our fluffy native animals aren’t really allowed to be pets.)

When I was four years old I moved to Edmonton, Canada, with my parents and baby sister. My dad was about to embark on a two-year stint of study at a university in Edmonton. My mum would be looking after us. A four-year-old and a nine-month-old. We arrived from sunny warm Melbourne to mid-winter Edmonton. Weather extremes!

Sometime after the first year, I got the hamster. He was the cutest little thing! A little fat round body, he would scurry under his wood shavings in his box, climb on his little equipment, sleep in his nest. And run on his wheel. Because that’s what hamsters do!

My mum loves plants. I have written a little about this love before. This is really my earliest memory of her love of plants. She had a vast array of potted plants in the townhouse we lived in. ‘Married Student Housing’ was what the area was called — subsidized housing for married students studying at university. A great idea really, and it meant my mum had some people living near her she could make friends with, who also had children.

So my little hamster appeared in our lives. I’d had another pet before we moved, before my sister was born. A duck. Daffy. But this hamster was cuter with four little paws and a cute fluffy face.

He was just like Houdini. An expert at escaping!

Being nocturnal, his adventures were always under the cover of darkness. He would somehow climb out of his quite large box and wander around the house eating my mum’s plants. Yep. Eating her prized plants! He wouldn’t completely denude them as my goats did, just nibble a bit here and there. I’m sure at first she didn’t notice. Or maybe she thought it was a grub or something.

He was always in his little nest in the morning, all cherub-like and cute.

According to my mum, she had no idea hamsters were nocturnal. How could she know? There was no Google back then. Hamsters were exotic to Australians. No one she knew had had a hamster. So, in her defence, she probably didn’t know. (Perhaps asking about them in the pet store would have helped!)

By the time my uncle and aunt came to stay my mum was really getting annoyed at my little hamster. She had tried all sorts of tricks to keep him in his box. A lid. Bricks on the lid. Taking all his playthings at night. Maybe they couldn’t afford to buy a fancy plastic lockable cage for my hamster? After all, they had saved money for two years so my dad could study at university. No big pet budget at all.

The last straw for my mum was when my uncle let out a blood-curdling scream in the middle of the night. The whole house lept up, turned lights on to inspect where and why this noise was happening. My uncle was hopping around, holding his hand, blood pouring from his thumb. “The bloody hamster bit me!”

It wasn’t just a little bite. It was a big chunk! My cute little hamster (albeit plant-eating hamster) had made my uncle bleed! This was all my mum needed. I don’t really remember the words she used, but it was very clear that my cute little hamster friend had to go. I was devastated. Of course, I was horrified he had chewed on my uncle, but I loved my little hamster! He was my friend.

And one day, he was gone.

My mum packed up all his toys and his box and that was it. Not too long after we moved back to Australia. To Melbourne. And I got some zebra finches called Scott and Pete. But that’s another story.

“But where did the hamster go?” I hear you ask. Well, my mum, being ever resourceful, felt that if Houdini the Hamster was so good at escaping she would let him escape. From his box. With the help of his little ladder. Out in the garden. In the snow. In the middle of winter…

I really hope he had snowshoes.

If you want to read more about Lisa’s childhood pet adventures, check this out:

Lisa really enjoys writing. She writes quite a bit of poetry. Lisa can often be found scribbling away in a notepad or tapping on her phone. She doesn’t have any pets at the moment but she does have some nice house plants. She didn’t think she was scarred from her childhood pet adventures but now she’s not so sure…