Last night, I took the hamster out to play with him (in previous posts I may or may not have referred to him as a gerbil, which may or may not be because he is very small and I hadn't actually held him yet). He is tiny! At most a third the size of normal hamsters. Yet very cute. The dogs were downstairs, of course (Hailey killed a chipmunk in the yard a few weeks ago and brought it to show everyone after she had playfully mangled it a bit). I didn't dare put him on the floor, not wanting to spend the rest of my evening recapturing him, but he had a little fun exploring the bedspread. I picked him up to put him back, and he squirmed out of my hands, falling on the floor (I'm always amazed that little creatures can fall many times their height and come out unharmed - imagine falling 100 feet and being fine!).
After that there was no stopping him! He scurried under the bed, with plenty of places to hide. The whole room is lined with dressers and mirrors and curtains and other things, so I despaired of ever coaxing him out. I removed some of the stuff under the bed, covering myself in dog hair in the process (the dogs sleep under the bed), but he wasn't there. I found him to the left of the bed, trying to sneak out from underneath a side table, but he resisted all attempts at corralling him and ran the other way. On the other side, it was a little more challenging, because the side table and a few other pathways for him converged. We played cat and mouse for about five minutes before I finally grabbed him. Then on the way to the cage, he squeezed out and fell again! Crafty little fellow. It only took a minute to corner him this time, in the same place. I put him back, figuring he'd had enough excitement for the night, but then thought again and put him in his green plastic ball.
I carried him downstairs (no, I'm not sadistic enough to let him roll down them, although it happened to one of our hamsters in Singapore on accident and he was fine) to let the dogs see him without tearing him to pieces. They reacted in the funniest way I've ever seen! Hailey barked a lot and stayed by me. She wouldn't get close to the ball, except for once when she went in and tried to bite it really quickly and then ran away. Duke barked some, but mostly he whined like he was scared or uncomfortable. I wish I'd had a video camera handy, because this would have made good YouTube material! Duke, surprisingly, was the more aggressive of the two in making advances. Usually he's the scaredy cat. He would go up to it and whine and bark and lick the ball and try to bite it and tap it with his foot. Speedy (the hamster) didn't seem to mind the dogs nearly as much as he minded me trying to catch him, but I guess the environment was completely different. Me catching him was probably a lot more like a normal predator/prey situation, whereas he probably couldn't really see the dogs very well and contently rolled around in his ball despite occasional jabs from Duke. He stopped a few times to do the little hamster thing they do with their front paws and face, rubbing all over, and Duke would just sit a few feet away and watch him until he started rolling again.
After we were done I put him back in the cage, and I took it down to show Duke and Hailey what Speedy looks like outside of a ball. They didn't seem to care much; hopefully I don't go home today to a cage knocked over and bloodstains on the carpet!
English title: There's a reason the hamster's called Speedy!
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