Friday, May 23, 2008

Devil Hamster aka "Gosh Darned Good For Nothing Fluffball"

Once again, I sincerely apologize for falling behind on my blogger duty so tremendously. I swear, this just comes in spurts. But... in my defense, we have been very very busy. Last week was the last of our busy stream, or atleast the main one; last week was fall works. I won't elaborate on that, just say we were short handed, which really reall stunk. Some days we were working cattle, Spring Works, with a 5 man crew. Most days a 6 man crew. 2 or 3 days we got lucky and had 8! Thing is, alot of people wouldn't dare think of working cattle without atleast 12, some are ambitious and go for 16. Nothin' wrong with that, just making my point that... We were short on hands. 2 dudes backed out so yeah. We also picked the best week this spring for working cattle. This week has thus far been incredibly hot, and I hear it won't improve much. It has been very warm, very windy, not fun. Last week, when we worked cattle, was awesome because two nights we got like almost 2 inches one, and 6 tenths the other night. And during the day it was overcast and calm, and we got sprinkled on, off and on, most of the days, it was just very cool and very nice. And we didn't have any extremely wild bovines, thank goodness.

Enough of that. Devil Hamster. Are you curious? Check out the picture below.

He goes by the name Dexter. Don't let the fluffy fur, cute little hands or seemingly innocent face decieve you. Inside, he has a teeny tiny heart made of ice, and a brilliant little mind.

I haven't had much time to handle him, well, at all since before last week. I was always exhausted in the evenings during working and I would just stick him in his handy dandy plastic runabout ball and off he would go!! Now Zoey has never been bad about chasing the hamsters. Sassafras has only escaped from her ball twice (not sure how she does it, must put her teeny little paws in the grips and twist it open and voila, she's an escapee) since we've had Zoey (twice more before that) and we always found out soon enough and kicked Zoey out of the room and caught the evil little bugger. Dexter has yet to escape. That is... until tonight. Or this morning. Whatever.

Let's set the scene, shall we? It's 1:07 am, I'm all snuggled up cozy in my bed, enjoying a pleasant dream about... I can't remember what it was about, but I was dreaming and it was pleasant, isn't that enough details people?!?! Moving on... Zoey was being obnoxious, knocking at Sassafras' ball (which I just put on the floor by the keyboard stand on which she resides) into the gun case and some shotgun shells, making a terrible racket. In addition, I could hear her scratching at something and pawing at my nightstand. I tried to ignore her, but much to my dismay, she continued. Well dangit you stinkin kitty!!! So I get up, and see she is pawing under my nightstand. I suspected a hamster had gotten loose, but quickly dismissed the idea.

I retrieve my flashlight...

Peer under the bed...

And I see-

OH MY GOSH! AAAHHHHH! DEX IS LOOSE! CALL 911!!! ANIMAL CONTROL! HEEEELPPP!

I struggle to calm myself down and prevent a heart attack. Okay, stay calm, just grab the hamster by his sorry little fluff and toss him in the cage and be done with it. First things first, throw the cat out. Next, turn on the light. Get the hamster ball. Back to the nighstand-

HE'S GONE.

Okay, it's okay, don't panic but AHHHH HE'S GOOONNNE! I frantically search about, to no avail. Finally I roll over to the other side of the room, near his cage, at the foot of my bed, and no Dexter. Well I can't neccessarily move the trundle underneath because the wheels could squish my precious little hammy. So I pick up the frame and move it back and peer behind the bed, but the mattress is in the way. I finally get smart and pull the mattress out, leaving my free to see-

There. There he is. Bwaha. You can't escape me now!

Well okay so maybe he can. See there is about 2x4 inch square mesh on the trundle, and when I try to reach through them to get the hammy, he moves and I can't get a good grip. I try to push him to the side of the trundle into the ball. Ah, there he goes, he's walking towards it-

NOOOO!

He avoids the ball, and skitters away out of sight. Why, you gosh darned, good for nothing little fluffball!!! I move the mattress back some more. Aha!! There he is. I try to pick him up by his fluff, but he flails his little bitty limbs frantically, claws at my hand, catches me by surprise, I bang my hand against the bed by accident, and, well, hurt myself. Evil little hammy. (Emphasis on evil.) I try to scooch him in the ball one last time...

AHA! You are mine, bwahahaha. I have finally caught the terrible beastie. I dump him in his bin, and latch it tight. (Yeah, Dexter's mama was very careless when feeding him lastnight, forgot to put the lid on the bin so it fits, and... well...)

ANYWAY. The hamster is safe and sound in his bin. And yes, I have Zoey to thank for it. And for not catching and eating him. I saw her catch a mouse once. (Outside, I assure you.) So yeah.

I remember when Sassafras first escaped. This was about a year and three months ago or so. I had had Sassy for a very little amount of time, maybe two months if that. I used to keep her bin on the floor, without a lid. It's high topped, she couldn't get out by crawling on anything, I didn't have a cat, why bother? Well, I'll tell you why. I have a very, very strange hamster. Not only is she excessively aggressive, biting relentlessly and seemingly untamable, she also has strange habits like chewing on the water spout (which is extremely, extremely annoying). And not only this, she crawled the water bottle. Yes folks, she did. I have done a LOT of reading on hamsters and never have I heard of such an account as this, and neither did my hamster people on Hamster Hideout (a forum). So I come home from shooting sports at about 11:30 (I forgot what delayed us) and she is gone. Of course I frantically search every room in the house, and don't forget that I post a frantic, panic post on HH about her escape. There are alot of things you can do when a hamster escapes, but luckily while I was on the computer trying to calm myself down by reading fellow members' reassuring posts, I heard a strange scratching that continued and continued. (It was about 1:00 at this point.) I finally just knew she was in the office. So I made a bucket trap. I took a bucket, put some bedding in the bottom, and some food. Then I made a ramp out of a cutting board covered with a towel and put apple and cheese all the way up the board, and in the bucket. Hamsters have terrible eye sight, and this has worked countless times, so I'm told. The hamster smells the strong-smelling food, crawls up the ramp, pouching and/or eating, and falls in the bucket, and is caught. But Sassafras wasn't interested in eating. Well I kept checking on the bucket and finally went in there once... And there she sat. I grabbed the hamster ball and put it in front of her, coaxing her into it, but she refused. She skittered away. I herded her back, between two boxes, and into the ball she went. It was 2:00 at this time. A.M, yes.

Needless to say, it is 2:06 A.M. now. I am wide awake with not a thing to do... But blog. Yessirree, so you can thank the hamster for this post.

Dadgummed fluffball. He didn't get a craisin tonight. And he won't get one tomorrow night. Heck he may never get a craisin again!!

Hey, he did the crime. He will suffer the consequences.

3 comments:

Sara said...

HAHAHA!! um, ahem, that isn't funny. Evil hamster! he should be horribly ashamed of himself.

Ranch Wife said...

Remind me to thank the little critter ~ after all, it is he who finally made you post something! I probably wouldn't be so quick to thank him if I hadn't slept through the entire episode though.

Ranch Wife said...
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