I type "I" to start this post then forget completely what I was going to say. Maybe I should go stare into the refrigerator for awhile, see if it comes to me.
If this were a (dedicated) hamster status site, this post should go like this:
Comet - continues to keep to himself. Having Bonnet die and then us leaving the next day for a week was just a bad, bad set of circumstances. It didn't help that he was still mad about the eye ointment to begin with. Strangely, what gets his attention is hand-fed sunflower seeds. Never mind that his dish and "trundle tray" (don't ask) are always full of seed mix, including sunflower, because he's never had much of an appetite. If I take a sunflower seed out of his pile and offer it to him, he gets all excited and is much more social. Probably because he thinks that now we're stealing from him, on top of everything else. Geez. Sorry, Com-com.
Stephen - If you have not been invited to Stephen's Milkbone exhibit in the Giant Strawberry, you really should make a few calls and try to secure a pass. It is only open for brief periods each day, but the size of the collection is impressive. Please note that if Stephen is in the gingerbread cottage, it's really best not to ring the bell.
Snorre - is on a fad "pumpkin seed" diet. It's possible that Snorre is the most insane and/or "severely emotionally challenged" hamster we've ever had, but he's a spazzy little cuss, and we keep him right by the bed so it's easy to lie there and watch him fling himself at his saucer, wheel, seeds, roof seeds, sand, a passing hand... he has a zest for reconnoitering. And pumpkin seeds.
Arthur - still looking great. Those antibiotics back in March sure worked wonders, and he loved the taste. (I don't know what Baytril tastes like, but it smells like bananas.) Speaking of Milkbones, Arthur and his son Sherman have created a "false front" technique of shaving the back of the Milkbone down to where you think they have a full bone, but no, not at all. It's a delicate metaphor for a Milkbone, if that. Very arty. Maybe we shouldn't have moved them next to Stephen.
Sherman - is getting smaller. I've been reminding Mike for weeks that Sherman is an old hammie now. He's wheeling less. Still a crumbcatching Squirmin', but it's clear he's slowing down and puttering around the house, content to sit in his sand bath munching seeds, full of Shermie-thoughts. He could leave in a month or in a year, and it would all be "within range." So, who knows, maybe he'll get a pep revival like his Da.
Pepper & Edith - might as well be twins, not mother and daughter. Like Sherman and Arthur (the other half of their family), they almost always sleep together, and when I come to visit they stick their heads out, eager to scamper. Unlike the boys, they both run daily and at length. I say, "Where are my robs?" and Mike argues, "They're not robs!" He's grumpy about the way everyone seems to be getting Roborovski dwarfs because they're trendy, and it's true that some places feel they need to put down the Campbell's dwarf (like we have) as a means of promoting the rob. (I'm talking to you, Petland store in Boca Park, where I could not diplomatically get one young employee to stop her steady stream of misinformation about Campbell's ["They don't socialize! They don't live together! They all bite!"] in her attempt to sell us a roborovski. Finally it had to get ugly. I'd say more, but then this might become a diary of amusing anecdotes and important consumer information, and not the mental wank I need it to be.) Anyway, Pepper and Edith are smaller than average and fast, plus cute as buttons (that are really cute), so I call them robs. (The end.)
June - is not giving up anything. Not gummies, not information, and not the gimpy too-small wheel we put in her habitat when we realized she and Terry were a mixed pair, and he got custody of the new green wheel. We got her a new blue wheel, to match the puny one used by Toss when he was a boy - remember Toss? - but she likes the tiny one that makes a ga-thunking noise. Otherwise, she stays in the hideouts I made for her. She's made one nest since coming here, which I thought might mean she was knocked up after all, but that was just hobby night, I guess. She likes the prefab luxury of the 30-piece puzzle maze/tunnel/ranch house I designed for her. Since it seems she's going to focus on her career as a SAHH, hamlings would seem to be off the table. I feel old.
Susan - is still a drinky hammie. Drink, drink, drink. Poor Susan. Oh, she runs and builds nests and sports with Cricket, and she will find the one hidden sliver of semi-contraband (due to her condition) sunflower seed in the mix, so I think she's happy. She's easy to hold and is as calm as can be, but when I watch her drag herself up from a sound sleep to drink for three minutes, I feel terrible for her. And is she getting smaller? I'm not sure. But she seems to be content, and it's really the only way of living she's ever known. So I should do more of what I'm doing now, which is stopping typing for a moment to watch her run around her toys like spilled grape juice* and enjoy herself.
(* Like spilled grape juice heading straight toward white carpet, even.)
Cricket - has decided that love is not a nasty punishment, Who was that hamster that leaped everywhere and zipped away from the hand? Who stuck her head in-and-out-and-in-and-out of the tiki hut, waiting for the Hand to go away? Is it the same young hamster that has recently become Susan-sized? Maybe that's why she now, after a token amount of coyness, gives up all pretense and stands in the hand, ready for her pick-up? It's hard to pet Susan without Cricket leaping up, wondering if it's time for an elevator ride to the snuggle zone. Getting a cuddle-mouse, complete with pointy nose and twitchy whiskers, was not what I expected when she arrived here with her invisible trampoline. She and Susan squabble at some point every day, but the rest of the time, they're zonked out side by side.
Terry - has been saved for last. I don't have favourite pets, I really don't, but I will say that Terry is very easy to love. Personality-wise, he's the closest thing to Snug and Snout since... ever? He's still huge and is indeed satin-coated, with a sort of platinum-flecked overcoat that makes him look like a hedgehog. Really - I might even believe you if you told me he was a new kind of supersoft dwarf hedgehog. (Adorability trumps good science.) He loves millet, eating in the sand, trotting in the saucer and wheel, sleeping halfway in his seed dish, and being talked to and picked up. Especially the last two. I don't know what I did to deserve the care and companionship of such a trusting and curious creature, however small, but I really must do more of it. I'm so glad he didn't get named "Oswald." (After the lucky rabbit, not Lee Harvey.)
Would you believe the above was supposed to be a bullet list of single lines? Heh.
And now the sun is coming up and Mike has staggered out of the bedroom to mumble questioningly in my direction on his way to the bathroom. (I'm going to take a risk that it's okay that you know he usually gets up at some point in the night to pee.)
I remember one thing I was going to write about - the movie Fur about photographer Diana Arbus, how she was portrayed by Nicole Kidman (who should drop her current adipocerious look for the brunette outing here), and how I can say I went 38 years without knowing about this person, despite Howard Nemerov being one of my (few and) fave modern poets. (She was his sister. Also, she was the first wife of the guy who played the psychiatrist on M*A*S*H. And, one of her photos is one of the 10 most expensive ever sold. I feel like I came late to the party and everyone still here is in the weepy hookup stage.)
So, we'll close with something by Nemerov that may be apt:
Insomnia I
Some nights it's bound to be your best way out,
When nightmare is the short end of the stick,
When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe
To walk at night, when waking is the only way
You have of distancing your wretched dead,
A growing crowd, and escaping out of their
Time into yours for another little while;
Then pass ghostly, a planet in the house
Never observed, among the sleeping rooms
Where children dream themselves, and thence go down
Into the empty domain where daylight reigned;
Reward yourself with drink and a book to read,
A mystery, for its elusive gift
Of reassurance against the hour of death.
Order your heart about: Stop doing that!
And get the world to be secular again.
Then, when you know who done it, turn out the light,
And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight
Reflective, listen to the whistling earth
In its backspin trajectory around the sun
That makes the planets sometimes retrograde
And brings the cold forgiveness of the dawn
Whose light extinguishes all stars but one.
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