I burst through the doors of Pet Co. We finally arrived! The shop carried a
large array of adorable (and not so adorable) pets, but what caught my eye
were the hamsters. The hamsters appeared in all sorts of sizes and colors.
One cage held tiny brown and black hamsters, all asleep. A separate cage
held a large black one, busily running on its wheel.
A lady who may have been blonde (I forget) told us they kept free up
for adoption hamsters in the back. (My mom wanted us to get one of those.
Whose mom doesn’t go for the word free?) She brought out a box full of
hamsters, black, brown, yellow, white.
The lady allowed us to pick the hamsters up and pet them. A cute,
brown hamster with a white stripe scampered around the parade of other
hamsters. I picked him up. He behaved differently than the others; not
biting or leaping from my hand.
After five minutes or so of examining hamsters, we selected the
brown one with the white stripe. We bought our new hamster a cage
and toys. The lady shoved a ‘hamster care’ book on us, then put ‘The
Chosen One’ in a box labeled “Pet Co.”
After the long drive home, we set our new hamster in a pre-prepared
box so we could set his cage up. His cage was a darkish blue with steel,
silver bars, and his running wheel was the same blue as the cage. We
attached a small room to the cage with tubes. (The hamster’s future bed-
room.)
One long discussion later, we decided to name the hamster
“Binky.” (I’m glad the hamster ended up with that name, instead of
Toronto.) My brother disliked the name, because he hated having a hamster
named Binky from “Arthur.” That was never the origin of Binky. He seemed
like a Binky to us. That’s all.
Binky loved eating, especially vegetables. He loved all kinds of vege-
tables, I can’t name them all! He ate fruits, too, and he seemed to enjoy
apples the most. Everytime we cleaned out his cage, there always seemed
to be some kind of fruit or vegetable hidden somewhere. Aside from that,
Binky kept his cage incredibly clean. Except for his bedroom. He stuffed it full of
hamster bedding, and no air got in! You could even see steam, sometimes, on the
see-through plastic of his room.
One day, our poor Binky was huffing, as if he had trouble breathing. I called over
Mom, who called over Dad, who began unscrewing the tube connecting Binky’s bedroom
to the cage, and most of the stuffing fell out. We took Binky away from his cage. He
was breathing normally in about 2 to 3 minutes.
A few days later, Binky was brought out of his cage to play. We set him down on
a towel on the floor, and… Zoom! Binky ran off. My brother leapt to grab the tiny
hamster… too late. Binky jumped into the heater, and we panicked. My sister (I think)
came back with a cup. When Binky crawled out from under the couch, she trapped
him in the cup.
We then invented a box where we put Binky, for whenever we bring him out
to play. We placed toys and food in it and watched Binky play with everything.
We even built Binky a “lego” maze! He got through it quickly, probably because of the
food prize at the end.
Binky is not here anymore. He lived a good, long year. We kept his cage, because
Binky was special to us. We did buy another hamster, later on, but he didn’t behave
as well as Binky. He bit us and refused to be held. Binky always let us handle him and he
never bit us.
