Here’s an article I wrote for my local paper a few years ago (my daughter was much younger). Hope you enjoy it…
Disposable Pets
What a crappy weekend. Fuzzy, my daughter’s beloved pet hamster, croaked. Fuzzy was a Christmas gift from Santa, so he was only with us for a few short months, but in that time he managed to:
- Bite my son’s finger
- Stink up his $100 hamster habitat on a weekly basis
- Keep us up at night with his constant midnight runs on the squeaky hamster wheel
My daughter was, of course, devastated. To a seven-year old girl, losing a pet hamster is a very big deal. Despite the fact that hamsters are nocturnal, and she only saw Fuzzy curled up sleeping during the day, she was deeply in love with the little rodent. And even though she was afraid to pet Fuzzy (because of the finger-biting incident), she wailed like a banshee when she discovered Fuzzy’s tiny corpse.
After calming her down enough so she’d listen, I concocted the following plan:
- We’ll have a wake to celebrate Fuzzy’s life (after explaining what a wake was)
- She can invite her friends over to help
- We’d get a cake for the occasion
- She could decorate Fuzzy’s “coffin” (a business card box) and make a tombstone (a rock with “Fuzzy” and the date in black magic marker)
- We’d bury Fuzzy in the backyard near the swing set so he’d be nearby (flushing was out of the question because I’m pretty sure Fuzzy was the world’s fattest hamster)
- Last, but certainly not least, we’d go look for a replacement for Fuzzy
I’m not a big fan of hamsters. To me, hamsters are cute rats that you put in a cage and ignore until they die. Basically, they’re disposable. But, we needed to fill the void in my daughter’s heart left by Fuzzy’s departure. And besides, my wife was not home (how inconsiderate!) and I needed to kill time to get my daughter’s mind off of Fuzzy’s rotting corpse.
So we headed to the local PETsMART superstore. PETsMART has a large selection of many different types of hamsters. I didn’t realize the wide variety of small rodents that were available for purchase in this country. In addition to the Black Bear, Brown Bear, Golden, and other hamster varieties, there were Rats, Gerbils, Mice, Guinea Pigs, Chinchillas, Ferrets, and Capybara (not really, I’ve just been watching the Animal Channel a little too much lately).
My daughter immediately headed for the only hamster that was awake at that hour of the day (about 11:00 am). This hamster was alternating between spinning frantically on the hamster wheel, and jumping over the backs of the other hamsters that were asleep (which is normal for a hamster). The hamster helper guy assured me that this was because this particular hamster was “hyper.”
After placing the hyper hamster into a cardboard box that he had poked holes in with a ballpoint pen, hamster helper guy explained the two-week guarantee on the hamster. If the new hamster were to die within two weeks, I could bring the hamster corpse in for a refund or a new hamster. It seems that PETsMART considers hamsters disposable as well.
We got the new hyper hamster, dubbed “Fuzzy Too,” home and prepared for the funeral of the first Fuzzy. With the help of her friends, my daughter brought Fuzzy’s coffin (now decorated with an orange, hand-drawn picture of Fuzzy and complete with hamster treats placed in the box for the hamster afterlife) out to the burial ground. I dug a shallow grave, reverently placed the box into the ground, and covered it over with dirt.
After a few short words from my daughter, we retired to the house and had cake and sang along with a SpongeBob SquarePants CD I had purchased a few days earlier (for the kids). Fuzzy Too was safely in his now-clean cage (I’m pretty sure I got all the dead hamster smell out), and the day was a complete success for everyone involved. Except, of course, the original Fuzzy.
For a little while, I was considering digging up the corpse of the original Fuzzy and bringing him back to PETsMART for a replacement. I could off Fuzzy Too without my daughter knowing, and replace it with a new hamster every two weeks to create a kind of perpetual hamster chain. That way, I’d always have a fresh hamster. Now, if I could only come up with some kind of plan to get rid of the wife’s dog . . .
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