Rest In Peace - Our Hamster Dunkin

[Vic Romano]

Dunkin managed to escape twice. Both times we didn't realize he was out until we saw him outside his cage. The first time I had gotten up for work and opened my closet to find him. I said to my wife: "Hon... why is Dunkin in my closet?" it was pretty funny. The second time he escaped, my brother-in-law and I were up all night playing GTA so we could check out the black Friday sales that morning. When we woke my wife up around 4am, she went in and found him on the kitchen floor! Fun memories...

 

[Krazedmuppet]

I sorry Vic...

 

[Rosewood]

R.I.P. Dunkin.......

I know it's hard to loose a pet, especially when it's one that has "grown" on you like that. I think the following story will bring some smiles to you and your wife.

When my husband and I first got married, we were always living in appartments that didn't allow dogs or cats, so we had to settle for smaller pets, and we also decided to start off with hamsters. We went to the pet shop and immediatly saw a long haired brown and white one we loved. The guy in charge of that department got him out for us and just off-handedly happened to say "Boy, these things sell faster than we can get them! We really need someone to breed these things for us. You guys want to make some money?" Well, being as gullable as we were at the time, we were willing to try anything for some extra cash, and within 2 weeks time we were up to our necks in everything we would need to breed! (At the time, I couldn't figure out why the guy at the pet shop had looked so dissapointed just because we had said we would get all the supplies at Wal-Mart. After all, he had sold us 5 more hamsters than we had planned on buying in the first place!) The brown and white one we wanted from the start turned out to be a male, so he was now the head of our little harom. And, once the breeding part started, I can honestly say I learned a lot more concerning the "Birds and Bees" of the hamster world than I had ever wanted to know! (Hense, the sole reason we ended up naming our alpha-male "Dirty Harry"!)

At first, we simply put each one in a seperate glass aquarium. That way we could stack them 3 across and 2 high and not take up much room. But after a while we just couldn't resist buying one of those fancy plastic condo's, complete with wheel and tubes leading to other little compartments. We had got it for Harry, since he was the only one who would allow us to hold and pet him. We got it all set up one afternoon, and then introduced Harry to his new home. He sniffed around at a few things, then found a corner and hunkered down and went to sleep. We figured we must have simply tired the poor guy out, so we just let him be. Then, that night, both my husband and I had just drifted off to sleep, when suddenly we were awakened by a horribly gosh-awfull rattle sound comming from the livingroom! We though mabey we were being broken in to by burglars! Ed told me to stay in the bedroom and grabbed a heavy object of some kind, just in case. He tip-toed out into the livingroom, ready to whallop any intruder who may be there. I watched from the bedroom. I saw the lights flip on, then heard Ed say "Oh, for cryin' out loud!!!!!" at which I ran out to see what he was talking about. There was Harry, running in his wheel like a bat out of you-know-what! That was the night we discovered (the hard way) that hamsters are nocturnal. We decided the next day to go ahead and buy the book called "All about Hamsters", just in case there was something ELSE we thought we knew (but really didn't).

Over the next few months, through trial and error, we finally, successfully, had raised a whole aquarium full of little hamsters that were now old enough to go to the store to sell. Durring that time, we had also discovered that Harry was quite the escape artist! Every 2 days or so we started getting calls from our downstairs neigbor, telling us to come get Harry! We finally figured out that he was jamming himself between the back of his wheel and the cage wall and literally "scaling" to the top of the cage and pushing up the lid! Then he would drop to the table, then to the chair, and then to the floor, run to the nearest wall, and once he reached the fireplace, he'd find the air hole leading down to the neigbors and would slide down the chute! (thank goodness it was summer, or he would have ended up one roasted rodent!) Once we figured this out, we started taping the lid shut. He didn't escape again for a long time. Saddly the next time he did turned out to be his last.

One day, he happened to get the itch to get out again. He went to the top compartment in his pad and started pushing on the air-vent untill it finally gave way. At this time he was pretty high off the floor, and that day he either fell victim to the fact that hamsters are near sighted, or he decided to take up "base jumping" without a parachute. Unfortunately, that long of a fall gave him some internal injuries he never recovered from, but right up to the end he was just as dear and sweet as he had always been. That was 15 years ago. And though we were sad for a long while, we found that wounds to the heart can heal, if given the needed time. We can now look back and smile as we remember all the funny experiences we went through with him. We also learned another valuable lesson - never take up hamster breeding unless you REALLY know what your getting into! LOL!

 

[Vic Romano]

That was a really cute story, Rosewood; thanks! Dunkin was a long haired hamster, and my wife says he was a teddy bear hamster or some kind of bear hamster. I don't think he is, but I don't argue with my wife.