T H E TA I L E N D
Hamster Houdini Who knew these little rodents could master the art of a great escape? BY ALISTAIR WEARMOUTH
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| ILLUSTRATION BY ANNA GRAPE
ike any good mystery, this one involves a death, fugitives and wrongly accused innocents. It begins with the untimely demise of dear Nibbles. A gift for my daughter’s eighth birthday, Nibbles the hamster lasted all of a week before a mysterious illness (we assume) snatched him away from us. This was a hard blow for a girl who’s grown up adoring kittens, puppies and pretty much anything with claws and a covering of fur. To make her feel better, we went to pick out a pair of dwarf hamsters from a different pet-store chain as a replacement for her erstwhile BFF (Best Furry Friend). These two were even cuter than Nibbles, and it was all going so well … for about a fortnight. One evening I returned home to discover we were down to one little rodent, Parkour. He’d earned the name (which comes from an obstacle course-style workout) after my daughter noted his ability to scale any obstacle in the exercise yard she’d crafted from cardboard, duct tape and old wooden blocks. His sibling, Speedy (Gonzales
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PET GUIDE 2015
— get it?), was nowhere to be seen. There was no carcass, no trace of foul play, at which point I erroneously accused my daughter of failing to return the little fella to his cage after his workout. It was a tough moment for her, and a few days later, she sobbed the heartbreaking admission, “Maybe I can’t have pets. They just die when I take care of them.” Ah, but the truth was near. Less than a day later, Parkour also vanished, apparently in the same way as his speedy counterpart. After Parkour’s mysterious departure, we noticed a teeny crack, less than a centimeter wide, in one of the attachment modules we’d set up as part of the hamster enclosure. Both hamsters must have made their great escape through that tiny space. But who knew a hamster could perform such a feat? Today, we like to think of our furry scofflaws out there on the lam, the Bonnie and Clyde of the hamster world, cheered on by Nibbles in hamster heaven. Or perhaps they should be remembered for what they really are: the greatest escape artists since Harry Houdini. Case closed.