As a young man growing up in the boring South Florida town of Vero Beach, AKA Zero Beach, I needed help to mantain sane through the great cow famine of '89. That help came to me in the form of, yes, a hamster. My dad is allergic to cats and dogs, so I got a hamster. Little did I know the effect of this ball of fluff would be so great, and would in the future influence me to get more hamsters. Er, actually now it's the past, but the fact remains that I got more hamsters. Anyway, I've decided to make a hamster bibliography of sorts, listing the names of hamsters that I've had and what I remember most about them. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what a bibliography is, but I'm sure that this isn't it. It's more of a list, really. Oh well.
Taffy- The original hamster, I probably should have named her Houdini. She escaped from her cage more times than I can remember, and the amazing thing is that she escaped in different ways after each time we solved something. For instance, we taped the top down so she couldn't lift it up anymore, and she just unscrewed the little circles on the top. We taped those down and she chewed through the little plastic bars in the circles.
I think that we called her Taffy because...well, I think because my sister liked candy. She was a golden hamster, so she had white fur with large golden spots, and didn't in the slightest resemble taffy. Oh well.
I remember once when she escaped. I had a glass of water on the table beside my bed, and in the middle of the night I went to get a sip, and BAM, there was a hamster in my drink. To think, I almost drank my first hamster!
Ollie Ollie Oxen Free- Actually, I never had a hamster named Ollie Ollie Oxen Free, but I think it would be cool to have one.
My sister's hamster whose name I can't remember- OK, this one wasn't actually mine, but hey, it might as well have been. This one never managed to escape, I think it was stupid or something. Actually, I never really liked it. Good riddance.
Big Butted Hamster that my friend Brad has- This one is really cool. Again, not actually mine, but I remember we used to make little buildings out of Jenga blocks, put little army guys in them and have a rampaging, large-assed rodent wreak havok on their miserable little lives. It was fitting because the army guys were made in Japan.
Kung Fu- The latest, and quite possibly the greatest. I got her for my birthday last year, and she escaped within a month and a half. And I'm not just talking ran out of cage to be found in bathtub next morning or in a week or so, I'm talking like premeditated assault and grand theft type escape. She was incredibly devious, she was.
First she made one heckuvalot of noise on her wheel because she knew I would move her into my brother's empty room for the night so I could get some sleep. She was right. Then, after coming home from school the next afternoon, I found that she had knocked off the top to the cage, compelete with a copy of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to boot. Super-strength, I tell you. I looked around the room, behind the bed, behind the bookshelves, and didn't find her anywhere. Then I looked in the closet. Get this, she had chewed a whole through the floor to the crawl space below my house. Chewed through the floor! For crying out loud, I can't even do that!
This isn't the last of the line of great hamsters of Travis's, oh no, next year on my birthday, expect Ollie Ollie Oxen Free II.
