And so it was the other night that the children's hamster passed away.
Now Hammy was a very long lived hamster, and so it really came as no surprise. She had been quieter as of late, not begging to be let out of her cage, and when I went into the kitchen during a movie I was watching I noticed that she was lying in the middle of the cage. I determined to bring her out to play, picking her up she seemed strangely limp and cool in my hands, and I kind of knew that this was it.
So I sat and watched the rest of the movie, holding and petting her, her little nose poked between my fingers, she would tremble and move about, but only a little. Usually she would stay still for a minute, tops, before wanting to be set free. But not then.
And perhaps a half hour later, feeling her limpness, I determined she was dead.
The children will be a little heartbroken, but they'll take some comfort in knowing that she lived to a great age (almost three years), and had a good life (with alternate days spent entirely free.).
Highlights from her life? Well, as the children aren't reading this I can be truthful. At least half of Hammy's life was a fraud. A double-identity, body double for the original hammy who met with her death in a cupboard way back in the days of the apartment. And one day helping my daughter to look for her I discovered her dead body, not wishing her to see I concealed the death. And it was great sport, the children looking for Hammy, our elusive free-range hamster, up to all sorts of mischief and adventures with the mouse no doubt, the children speculated.
This went on for several months, and then when I moved I had to reproduce hammy, the children were afraid she'd been left behind, so in the new residence I acquired another one, same sex and color. They never questioned the switch.
She had a name, "Night Time" or "Blackie", or something similar, I forget. The children never really knew either, after the initial naming ceremony she became more or less known as "Hammy". And so the new Hammy replaced the old, and sometimes the boy would observe how long lived she was, without the slightest suspicions, they only usually live to be about 3 years of age, tops, and here's ours pushing 5.
She would sit in the cage and beg for food when I would cook, greedily hauling in slices of green pepper or lettuce. We tried her on the Habitrail system, but she'd hole up in the tubes, living on stockpiled food that was soaked in her urine and smothered in feces. We found that gross, and so removed all of the tubing, she could live without it. When she wanted out she'd hang by her teeth from the top of the cage, sometimes she'd make noises, or fill her cheeks with seeds and wait to be let out, as if she were running away from home.
She never ran far. If you were lying on the floor, after an hour or so she'd come to you, run up your sleeve or onto your lap, and you knew she was ready to go back into her cage.
She was a pretty good little hamster. RIP.