Huffblog: Scurry

Last November, my daughter got a hamster for her birthday. She'd been wanting a pet so badly, and while guinea pigs are more cuddly they also smell worse. Used to breed g. pigs when I was a lad.   Teryn promptly named the hamster Scurry Nibble Huff.

Though she is a little young for a hamster, I thought we could learn a little responsibility and share in the joy of the family pet. Plus hamsters are nocturnal so I would have a nighttime companion, a rodent by choice, not one of the "free" rodents that roamed about the kitchen until we plugged up the holes with steel wool (and until the local mouse community learned about the Mighty Linda, destroyer of mice, breaker of mouse necks, the Terminator.)

Teryn helps clean the cage, we take her out and pet her, and we also let her roam the house in the hamster ball.   While T can't be unsupervised with her, she talks to her quietly and is gentle. So far the hamster has been uneventful.

Until this morning. Awoken in a panic. T woke up to find the hamster cage open and Scurry gone. Which was very strange as I had heard her in her wheel when I went to bed at 4 AM (yes, I am nocturnal too). Hammo had somehow pushed the door open, probably flopped onto the towels below, and took off.   Free at last!   The steel wool was moved in one part of the kitchen so clearly she had gone under the stove.   After about an hour of managing a weepy T and wandering the house with a carrot trying to cajole the wanderer out, we were giving up.   We left the cage open on the floor with a full food dish in case she came back.   Chances are when she got hungry, she'd come back. Linda and I discussed what would happen if she encountered mice. Not happy.

I got a weird hit on my phone (I have a Google alert for Chris Huff music), and nothing was coming up on the page, so I went to my office to check it out on the computer. T was still calling "Scurry...Scurry" in the living room.   Sitting on the POD XT Live underneath my Gibson ES-335 (good taste btw Scurry) was a very alert hamster, a dust bunny hanging off her whiskers. I would have said little, but the thing has multiplied exponentially since arriving chez Huff.

So many decisions for her to make. "I love being free." "But I am hungry." Who knows what goes through the mind of the escaped hamster. "Look, Ma, top of the world!" She fussed as I picked her up, but mainly because I didn't give her the carrot. Within minutes the crisis was averted, hamster was returned to her cage, and Daddy was the Hamster Hero. Scurry dove into the food dish. Twisties on the cage door should prevent further unsupervised adventures.