I cannot even begin to tell you how long it took me to remember how to log into this, make a title, and write a blog. It is really embarrassing, actually.
Anyway, one time I brought my dead hamster home for Christmas. Not the hamster in the picture, that is Derek DelHamio, who is also dead, but it had nothing to do with Christmas.
I have had hamsters since I was about 10. Michelangelo, Porky, Mimi, Steven, Ken, and Derek DelHamio. Mikey and Porky died when I still lived at home, and my brother and dad took care of matters. Mimi was my first hamster when I lived in my own apartment. My dead best friend Catharine also lived in my own apartment with me and Mimi. Wait, Catharine wasn’t dead at the time. But Mimi was, after awhile. I know a declining hamster when I see one, and I knew Mimi’s time was coming, and I didn’t know what to do, so I slept on the floor near her cage and waited for her to die.
But here’s the thing, she had a little wooden house and that is where she camped out in her Dying Time, and so I didn’t actually know if or when she died. I knew that she hadn’t come out of the house for about 18 hours. I knew that she didn’t eat off the spoon she would sometimes lick if I put it near the door of the house. But I did not know for sure that she had died.
It was Christmas when I was pretty sure she had died, and my brother and I were going to my parent’s house, so I took Mimi’s whole cage with me, with a Schroedinger Hamster inside. I could not bring myself to lift up the house and see if she was dead, so my brother did. He said she was dead. I asked multiple times if he was sure, and he said yes, she was definitely dead. So then I asked him to bury her in the middle of Ohio winter (i.e. frozen, everything is very frozen). He did. I am not 100% confident he dug the requisite 6 feet. In fact, if he dug 6 inches, I’d be surprised.
Mimi joined Porky and Mikey in the backyard, and also my bunny, Harry Robert Connick Johnny Downey Anderson Depp JuniorJuniorJunior. I called him Harry for short. I got him when I was 15 and wanted to be a magician, and he died when I was 17. Points to your house if you can name all the people I named him after. Bear in mind, when I was 15 it was 1991.
So the pet cemetery in my backyard was joined by Ken, the dwarf hamster who lived at my office and died in my hands. Steven, the next office hamster who died, was buried nicely by my manager on the hill outside our office. Then Derek DelHamio was assisted by a vet to die.
Back to the point of this, there are multiple hamsters and a bunny buried in my backyard. When it rains hard, the backyard gets swampy and I live in fear that they will all come floating to the surface. Or that someday a cat will go walking by with Harry in his mouth. Logically I realize they are all bones now, but that is not how my brain works – in my morbid scenario, Harry is still a full bunny and not a skeleton when the cat walks by carrying his lifeless body.
I think I started out with the intent to write about something fun and lighthearted, and this took a dark turn.