Death of a Hamster

I am at home sick today, and to make the event even more depressing, I am watching my little dwarf hamster die ever so slowly. Trouble has been acting strangely lately, and we have suspected that his end was near. He started biting me whenever I tried to pick him up, which helped me considerably to get over the impending loss. (I do believe I spent the last few weeks yelling at him and calling him names for biting me every time I tried to fill his bowl or change his water. I think we have emotionally separated and severed that nurturing owner-hamster bond beyond repair.) But still, even with the animosity I have been feeling towards my furry friend, I am feeling sorry for him. He went through a weird squeaking/chirping phase last week and has now fallen silent. Today I found him staggering about, unable to walk properly, and falling into narcoleptic fits mid-grass pellet. He finally collapsed at nine this morning, falling asleep over his food bowl. I had picked him up previously and he was completely unresponsive to my touch. I can see his little tummy rise and fall in painfully slow, shallow breaths, but he is out cold. I think he ate his last meal early this morning of sunflower seeds, a favorite of his because to him they are a kind of narcotic that is similar to catnip to cats.

I don't think he is suffering. He can't open his eyes and with his paws stretched out in front of him (which is an odd position for a hamster), he sort of looks like a sleeping puppy. When I saw him having trouble this morning, I went ahead and cleaned out his cage. I took him out and placed him on the carpet. At one time the revelation of cageless horizons would have sparked him into a curious romp about the living room, but not today. He didn't move at all. In fact, I don't even know if he was aware at all that he was outside his cage. He did, however, look rather lonely and cold. I bundled him loosely in a tissue (like he loved to do himself) and placed him in his cage. I gave him fresh water and filled his bowl with the last of his food, which was ironic because he just so happens to be dying on the first day in two years that I would have had to go buy a bag of hamster feed. He isn't interested. He isn't conscious. He is just slowly dreaming his life away.

And have to sit here and watch him.

It is no sad event. In fact, looking back over this little guy's life, he has really been through a lot of trauma. Being a classroom pet to 20 hyper inner city kids (who think poking a hamster with pencils is a sport) probably didn't prolong his life. I am forced to reflect on his death and the death of my previous hamster, who passed away alone in my classroom over last Thanksgiving break. I think that maybe I owe this one a better burial than Tribble. Being quickly chucked into a public dumpster before the children arrived that morning seems undignified somehow. I don't know what to do with this one. I thought about putting him outside to die a free hamster in the wild, but then I started thinking about the cold wind, stray cats, and scared hamster feelings. So his final moments will be here with me, in my living room, passing away to old reruns of "The Nanny" and "The Golden Girls". If I knew his favorite show, I am sure I would have it on. But alas, my hamster never developed the power of telepathy, so he is stuck leaving this world surrounded by my viewing choices.

I didn't know what to do with him after he's gone. I thought about what an honorific burial for a hamster might be, so I considered various options. A small funeral pyre is a heroic way to go, but I don't know if I could stand the burnt hamster smell or conduct it properly as not to catch anything else on fire, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it in our barbeque pit. I thought about burial, but I was afraid of what might happen to him. The last thing I need is for him to be dug up by a neighborhood stray or attract a bunch of ants to our house. (It took us forever to get rid of them the last time we were infested.) I don't think I could flush him, because there's nothing grosser than a hamster that is both dead AND wet. Again the dumpster option rears its ugly head. Trouble doesn't strike me as the type who cares where his body goes, as long as he is free from his cage. Some days I think that perhaps his loneliness was unbearable, but then my husband points out that his cranial capacity is such that he is incapable of feeling such a complex emotion, so the ignorance of his loneliness made him even more pitiable.

With nothing else to do besides sleep, take pain pills, and watch him die, I started writing some haikus about him. At first I thought that, although his loss isn't devastating, I should at least feel something sad. I know that these poem addressed to him are really for me, so I went ahead and wrote them anyway. That way, if he comes back as a human in the next life who can read English, he may wonder over to my blog and read what I had to say about his final days (although this is highly unlikely).

Trouble the Hamster
Be not troubled anymore
Cageless, you are free

Touching yes, but then I realized that although dwarf hamsters have a life expectancy of two years, so I was forced to reflect on what might have caused his departure a year early. I settled on his classroom experience with 20 seven-year-old students feeding him crayons probably had a little to do with it. So then I wrote:

Fuzzy little friend
I have heard that stress could kill
Sorry about that

This one struck me as kind of funny, so I then started entertaining funny hamster death poems, like:

Fluffy Hamster Wings
Carry you up to heaven
Will there be cheese?

Hamster heaven is
Mountains of sunflower seeds
But without the shells

Then I found one that was kind of in between:

Hamsters in heaven
Run on big wheels all day long
This time, they go places

I hope you get where you have always wanted to go, little buddy. So far, your trip appears to be a nice, long, peaceful journey. I guess that's all one could hope for in the end.

RIP
Trouble
2004-2005
Pet, Friend,
Hamster