improvising - suddenly, violently and all over the place

Things are rolling pretty fast around here and I'm trying to keep up.  I missed our moment of zen though.  Here, have a moment of stalking instead.



someone has still not gotten over the arrival of the cross dressing ham.  someone is insisting on keeping an eye on said tricky, little, cross-dressing ham.  someone has apparently developed an unhealthy obsession.

so... everyone remembers Ralf, right?  Teeny, tiny, sweet, slightly dense Ralf of the romantic hijinks?  Well, he's not so small anymore.  But considering the way he sleeps - well, let's just say the fact that all that blood is regularly rushing to his head apparently explains a whole lot.  He's such a little dude.

( cut for flaunted nudity )

so...

does anyone remember Moving Day from the movie The Secret of NIMH? 

Yeah, that was my bedroom at about five this morning. 

First off, all those goobs of information online about baby hamsters, etc - yeah, well, throw that out the window.  I've been having the week from cheese grater - ie. I feel like I'm regularly being run over a cheese grater.  Did you know that no one bothers tell you that the mama hamster will have light bleeding up to a week after giving birth?  Cause they do and if no one tells you that the first time you pick your baby up in your hands and she leaves spots of blood behind three days after having her babies, you tend to freak.  Also when you notice she's got lumps on her sides near her hips - it tends to make you nervous (thank you, pet store lady, for telling me they were either tumors or rotting unborn babies and not the milk ducts the vet later told me they were).  I suppose if I was just breeding hamsters for fun and profit I wouldn't really worry too much but I'm breeding hamsters because I want a second generation of these very odd and wonderful, very specific little critters that regularly harass me and make me smile (not to mention my hamster huffing habit needs a continuation and one of these hamsters smells like dusty cinnamon). 

Besides, I'm a bit of a hoverer.

To start the story, we're down to one baby.  I'm not sure how the other two died but Booth doesn't eat her babies the way the information tells you.  Instead she buries them in her nest.  Which is sweet... and probably not the most sanitary.  Looking up information on the internet it mentioned that, should a hamster not eat all of a baby, it's safe to remove the remains from the nest while she is away - being careful, of course, not to touch anything and leave you scent behind (because mama's eat their babies that don't smell right).  So, while she was out rampaging around the room last night and dumped the food in her cheeks in a corner of the closet after ripping up a bit more of the carpet there, I went in with a pair of sterilized tweezers, careful not to touch the remaining baby, and took out the bodies (which are now buried in my rosemary).  I touched nothing and when she got back in her cage, I distracted her with a blueberry (we both adore those) and after a sniff at her remaining baby she got on the wheel and went for one of her casual 'I'm too cool to run' strolls.

All seemed well.

All seemed well until about an hour later when I heard the baby crying.  It's a strange little sucking, sea gull noise that's hard to explain.  Me being me I flipped open my cell phone, got out of bed and checked.  Booth was frantically carrying the remaining baby around the cage and around in circles (which is no easy thing considering the size of the tusks those critters have on them).  As soon as she saw me she ran over to the door of the cage and went up on her back legs, the signal that she wants out. 

With a mouthful of baby.

Well, the answer to that is obviously 'heck no!' and I retreated so that she would put the baby down somewhere, make a new nest, whatever hammie instincts told her to do.  Five minutes later the baby is still crying and the skin is starting to stretch red and Booth is still frantic and running around in circles.  Every time she puts the baby down there's this horrible sight of watching her trying to carefully pick it back up again even though she can't see it with her eyes positioned on either side of her head and wiggly baby screaming and - so fine!  I open the door and hold out my hands for her.  Booth immediately crawls up the side of the cage, into my hands - baby still in mouth - and, not knowing what else to do (I don't have spare cages, the baby's just got ordered) I set her on the desk top.  Around and around the desktop at frantic speed.  Baby's still crying.  I pick Booth and baby back up, put them back in the cage and pull the cover over it, hoping the lack of me will help.  Baby's still crying, Booth is frantically pacing in front of the door.

And that, officer, is how I ended up with a hamster nest in the corner of my closet.

The second I put her there, she darted back to her previous seed stash.  Came back with the baby missing and the seeds she'd been carrying in her cheek gone.  Took the torn up toilet paper I offered her and carried it back to the nest.  A minute later, she's back and packing down more paper, some of her cage cover I'd cut off for her, and some seeds.  Back to the nest she went.  By now it's six in the morning.  My nerves are shot and there's no WAY I'm going to sleep anytime soon.  Booth however is happily ramping around in the closet, gathering stores I've scattered around for her to find.  Last I saw of her, she'd curled up in a ball around her remaining baby in the corner of the closet and was sleeping the sleep of the pure e-vile.  Thank God that closet has been a favorite den of iniquity for my hamsters for years and I'd already hamster proofed it.  I left the open cage in the closet so she could get to her water and anything else she wanted in there.

One more week to go before the baby's eyes are open and the fur is all filled in.  At that point I'm supposed to be allowed to touch it and to clean the cage. 

dryly, very dryly, I would like to submit that I'm way beyond that point.