Cage

19 April 2010

I used to breed Russian hamsters.

That sounds a bit more dramatic than it was, since for the most part the Russian hamsters bred themselves. I had one girl Russian hamster. For reasons best known to herself my girlfriend of the time wanted another one. We thought we had another girl. We didn't. Then we had multiple Russian hamsters, all of which were in danger of getting pregnant themselves by the time they were 9 weeks old. It was a bit like Essex.

I was never that comfortable with the whole thing. I thought they were adorable (the humbug stripe down the back is particularly winsome), and the line in the "How To" book about scooping up any bewildered babies in a teaspoon to return them to their mother is unbearably cute, but in the end we were sticking a load of things in a cage and expecting them to be entertaining.

We tried all the usual things to keep them interested. The wheel didn't work, because Russian hamsters are so small that they'd fall through the slats. However, our original hamster, Beckett*, put it to good use. She would stand on the outside of the wheel and spin it with her forepaws. Now, this may well have been much needed cardiovascular upper body exercise, but I think Beckett did it because she knew that it was very, very annoying.

And while it might be nice to imagine the little rodent's mind enjoying our discomfort as she spun away at 2 in the morning, it's even better to recall what she actually did. One night, when the metallic squeaking of the wheel's revolutions became a little too much, I did what I'd done a couple of times before. I stumbled through the dark to the cage, flipped open the Rotastak, and lifted out the wheel, placing it on the floor as I resealed the cage.

The first two times i had done this Beckett had scampered around her cage in protest for a while, gnawing at the tiny bars and generally being a fluffy nuisance before giving up.

This time she was silent.

Tired as I was, it took me a moment to realise that the wheel had felt a little, well, heavy. And it was only when I heard the sound of a hamster scuttling merrily around the bedroom that I caught on. Despite spinning the outside of the wheel, when I had opened the cage Beckett had climbed inside the wheel, presumably knowing that I would lift it out. She had sat quietly until I resealed the cage, and then made good her escape.

While this was all very impressive, I did reflect as I scrabbled on my hands and knees trying to catch her, that it's not a terribly proud moment to be outsmarted by a creature with the brain the size of a snow pea. I'm not sure I've ever got over it.

* all of the hamsters had to be named - for some reason - after figures connected to Canterbury Cathedral. Thus we had 'Beckett', 'Odo', 'Lanfranc', 'Cuthbert' and 'Reasonably Priced Gift Shop'.