Leah W.'s Memoir

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.