The Passing of Our Hamster

Well, my hamster died yesterday. I didn't really think it was my hamster, but my wife felt differently. Truth be told, it was me who took care of her most of the time, aside from cleaning the cage. I fed her, made sure she had water, and let her out to roll around in her hamster ball most of the time. I even named her. Her name was Mabel. And I buried her yesterday in the corner of our garden.

She was a pretty good little hamster. She ran in her cage like a maniac and kept us up at night with her noise, but we learned to close the door where she was kept. At first we didn't really like her because she wasn't as fun to play with as the previous hamster we had. Eventually, though, as she aged, she got to be much more fun to play with and she definitely grew on us.

We also learned that she was an escape artist who found every possible weakness in her cage, even learning to undo the latches that kept it closed. We still don't know how she did it, but we finally figured out that if we ensured all the latches were closed and put a really heavy book on top of her cage, she couldn't get out. And when we forgot to replace the book, she reminded us that we needed to keep it there when we found the cage empty, with the entire top of the cage ajar. Luckily, we learned where she would go when she escaped, so we were able to find her soon after she got out most of the time.

Hamsters don't usually live more than a few years, but we only had her about eight months. We had no idea she would pass away so soon, though, as she seemed healthy.

We will miss her. Farewell Mabel.