Ha Ha Ha. It's Catching. Hamsteritis

This email is from my sister.

So now I am the proud owner of a little black and white hampster named Ike, thanks to you! We got a gray one and Parker was holding his box on the ride home when he let out a scream. The stupid thing bit his finger and drew blood through the little hole in the box. I did a u-turn and promptly exchanged the little rat b@st@rd. LOL This one is very cute and friendly. Morgan has only let him out once so far - LOL. The kids are thrilled.

Hamsters to the Exponential Power

So I posted a couple of days ago about buying Madi another GusGus. She was so happy to have two hamsters again. And she named the new one GusGus II. I figured we'd forget about about II after a while.

The NEXT MORNING, I'm in the shower and I hear screaming in my bedroom. The cat runs through my bathroom and into my walk-in closet. And then comes Libby, and then Madi and then Carlie in hot pursuit. I stick my head out of the shower and ask "What's going on?!?!?"

Hunter is in my closet and he has dropped the hamster on the floor. I tell Libby to shut the door to the closet and I will look for the hamster in there after I get my clothes on. But before she can get the cat OUT of the closet and shut the door, the hamster goes streaking across the tile bathroom floor. So I bound out of the shower (yes, naked of course) and of course, I do not have my contacts in, so once again I cannot SEE. Water is streaming off my hair. The tile floor is now wet and slick, and I'm scrambling around (yes, naked) trying to catch the dang hamster.

I'm finally able to corner it. It is normally a ligh gray and white color. But it is so wet from the cat's mouth and the wet floor that now it is dark gray. And I'm just a bit hesitant to grab it...it does look an awful lot like a mouse. But I suck it up and grab. And it IS a hamster. I look him over, and he has no obvious injuries, but he does look a bit glassy eyed. I had the girls bring the hamster cage to me and put him inside.

I went to go check on him an hour later before I left for work. He was all dried out, and I couldn't tell him apart from the other two hamsters, so now we have THREE hamsters.

Madi decided to change his name from GusGus I to Lucky. LOL. Will I EVER learn? Probably not.

The critter is definitely Lucky. If the cat had caught him an hour later, the house would have been empty. The cat just happened to run by Libby who happened to be in my bedroom and she happened to notice that the cat had the back-end of a hamster sticking out of his mouth. He's escaped the jaws of death twice!11

You'd Think I'd Learn About Hamsters!!!

Madi LOVES animals. She wanted a rabbit for her birthday. I talked her into getting two more hamsters instead. She named them Tiny and GusGus. They are drawf hamsters and about 3 inches long. They are so cute.

But we'd only had them two days when a catastrophy happened. I woke up to a crash at 3am, and knew immediately what had happened. Our cat Hunter had knocked the cage off into the floor. The plastic cage had popped apart and the hamsters were FREEEEEEEE!!!!

Now keep in mind that I am LEGALLY BLIND without my contacts in. I rush in there and by the time I get there, Hunter has a hamster halfway in his mouth. The hamster's head is sticking out and it is going "Eeeeeek. Eeeeeek. EEEEEEEEK." I grad the cat by the scruff of the neck and shake him until he lets go of the hamster. It runs under the bed. Madi is on top of her bunkbed shrieking hysterically. Did I say that it was 3 AM.

I get ready to crawl under the bed and Madi yells "There goes one in the closet!!!"

I'm not sure if it is a supreme act of athletism on my part (blind just out of a deep sleep) or sheer luck. But I pounce on the hamster and manage to catch it.

We looked for GusGus for an hour. I finally told Madi that I HAD to go to sleep.

Today after work, I got her another Gusgus. It wasn't her fault the dumb old cat knocked the cage over.

Halloween Decorations

I sent this picture of our Halloween Decorations to Granny, and she replied "PLEASE tell me that isn't where you buried the Hamster!!!!"

LOL.

More on the Death of Hannah

Bob's Niece, Arlena watches our kids for us when they get out of school. And as I've mentioned before our house always seems to be full of kids.

It turns out that when they found Hannah dead, Madolyn got hysterical. She went screaming up the stairs "Hannah's dead. She's been stabbed!!! She's been stabbed!!! She's DEEEEAAAAD!!!"

Well poor Lena, didn't know that Hannah was the HAMSTER. She thought there was a neighbor kid named Hannah down there who'd been stabbed and was dead. She said she nearly broke her neck running down the stairs to see who was hurt. It scared her to death!!!!

The craziness never ends at our house. Madi was playing with the remaining hamster, Angel, yesterday. I wake up to hysterical screaming. Apparently she set the hamster down for a second and Hunter, our cat, picked it up and took off running with it. Bob had to chase the cat down and get the hamster back. Luckily she was not hurt. Whew!!

Rest in Peace, Hannah.

The kids discovered today that one of their hamsters was dead. It was the one who was the escape artist. Libby had taken one of her friends downstairs to see the hamsters. Hannah wouldn't come out of her little house. When Libby lifted the house up, she was lying underneath it with her feet in the air.

Libby thought at first that she was dead because it was Frank's turn to feed them last night, and he hadn't done so. I explained to her that it wasn't anyone's fault, that the hamsters were just old.

Then she told me that the hamster's teeth were sticking out about three inches, and Frank had said that we were supposed to take the hamster to the vet to have its teeth trimmed regularly and that's why it was dead. I told her that the hamster's teeth were always like that, they were just normally covered up.

Then poor Libby told me that she'd been online all afternoon looking for Pet Cemeteries where we could bury her. I guess I'm lucky that I nipped that in the bud before I got a bill for a $600 hamster plot somewhere in California.

Lena (Bob's niece who watches the kids after school) tried to get them to throw it in the trash, but the kids wouldn't hear of it. They told her "How would you like if we just threw YOU in the trash after you died!!!!"

So I guess we have to have some kind of hamster funeral this weekend. Sigh!!!

First I Lobster....Then I Flounder

I found the hamster. I found the hamster!!! Alive even!

I have been home alone most of the week. Bob had a wedding to attend in South Dakota. He left Wednesday, and my Mom came and picked up the kids. They took the remaining hamster and the cage with them.

While all the kids were gone, I searched the house high and low several more times looking for the darn thing. Then I ran into the former owner one night at the store. She told me that this particular hamster had escaped several times, and they always found it asleep in a tennis shoe. So I went home and looked in every shoe in the house....and with as many kids as we have....that's alot of shoes!!! But no sign of Hannah.

Then I put out a pile of hamster food upstairs and downstairs. On Friday night, I went down to check on the pile of food, and the one downstairs was gone. So then I knew she was still alive and downstairs.

So I start checking shoes again. In Libby's tennis shoe, I didn't find the hamster, but I DID find hamster FOOD. So I knew she'd been there. So I shut the door and went through Libby's room. I found Hannah behind the closet door. Whew!!!!

So now I have the missing hamster, but no hamster CAGE!!! So I put her in bucket in my whirlpool tub, and I closed the bathroom door. I came back an hour later to check on her, and the door to the bathroom is open and the dang hamster is gone AGAIN!!!

The bucket was knocked over. So I don't know if she managed to escape herself or if one of our dogs and cats gave her a "lift" out of the tub. I start searching for her again, and Hunter (our cat) had her cornered behind the dresser in the little girls' room.

I'm gonna change that rodent's name to Houdini!!!

P.S. About Losing Hamsters

We still haven't found her. We've all looked everywhere.

But there are two things you realize when your hamster gets loose.

1.) Your house is alot bigger than you thought it was.
2.) Your house is ALOT dirtier than you thought it was.

I've found some dust bunnies under my furniture that were down right scary!!!

I hope we find her soon :0(

We have a prison break on our hands!!

It tooks less than 48 hours for one of the hamsters to escape. We think the escapee had help from the outside....the suspect is one Carlie Pool...aged 5....both child and hamster should be considered armed and dangerous.

They played with the poor hamsters allll day yesterday. And remember, Hamsters are noctural creatures. They like to stay up all night and sleep during the day. Bob made them put them up occasionally for a brief rest, but that's about it. At bath time, I sent the little girls to the bath tub and the big kids to the shower. One of the hamsters was left unattended in the hamster ball. When all the kids left, I swear it gave a big sigh of relief and just sat there in the hamster ball.

When I went to bed at 11pm, I decided that I'd better go check on the hamsters. Normally they'd be awake and playing at this time...instead ours were out cold in a corner of the cage...yes, I did check them to see if they were still breathing.

Madolyn (the one who really, really loves animals) got up at 6:30am this morning so that she could play with the hamsters all by herself without sharing. At 9am this morning, I get a frantic call from Bob that one of the hamsters is missing.

They think that Carlie set it down somewhere and left it. They have looked for it all day, and can't find it. I think it's probably off in a dark corner somewhere wonderfully relieved to be away from the Pooligan clan.

Now I've had experience in finding lost hamsters...so when I get home, I'll see if I can find it. They think it's down in the basement somewhere, so hopefully it hasn't gone far.

Meet the Newest Pooligans

Welcome Hannah and Angel to the family. A neighbor across the street offered them to the kids...along with their cage and supplies. The more the merrier, eh??