How to Spoil Your Hamster

Hello all,

It's been a long hiatus, but I'm back on Talus Slopes to tell you about hamsters.  I have a hamster named Hurley, who I posted about 2 years ago!  Here is the original post.

Since then, I have had a couple of epic hamster birthdays, each of which consisted of cooking Hurley an entire apple pie, inviting my friends over to sing the happy birthday song, and cutting out a very small slice of pie for Hurley.

(photos courtesy of ternus)

Those are photos of his first birthday.  For is second birthday, last month, he got another pie, this time with a small scoop of ice cream that he mostly ignored.  Here's this year's pie:

Video!

Now, we shall fast-forward through time, because today, I made homemade shortcake with homemade whipped cream and strawberries.

I stacked a small piece of shortcake with a small amount of whipped cream, then cut off a tiny tip of strawberry...

...and I made a tiny tiny dessert for Hurley!

Hurley hamster gets a snack.

And that is how you spoil a cute hamster.

House Mouse Adventures

A brief message tonight: there are mice in my house.  There is also a hamster in my house, but we want the hamster here.  The mice arrived uninvited.

On the second floor, a baby mouse (about the size of my hamster's head) was inadvertently captured when it smelled peanut butter and fell into the sink.  My housemate, Yuki, arrived at home and found a small mouse bouncing around.  It was too small to gain the elevation required to escape the sink, though.  Yuki poured the water out of the empty peanut butter jar and captured the mouse.

That night, I walked up to the second floor to see the little critter.  Yuki carefully opened the peanut butter jar, and a very, very small rodent looked up at me pathetically.  Its fur was spiky and drenched in a mixture of peanut butter and water.  Tiny black eyes stared at me, and then House Mouse gave a mighty leap in an attempt to free itself.  Yuki slammed the lid back on.

Known Fact: I like rodents.  I decided to rescue the House Mouse from its peanutty conundrum.  I carefully transfered it to an old hamster ball.

I placed a breadstick in the hamster ball as a snack.  The breadstick probably equalled the mouse in volume.

The House Mouse was very cute.  I aaalmost considered keeping it, except it was so small that it would have escaped any cage I put it in.

At length, it came time to transfer House Mouse into a carrying container.  The next morning, Yuki was going to release House Mouse into some bushes.  I prepared a cozy little home as best I could.

The small home included some oats and a water-soaked paper towel to lick.  Ken helped me transfer House Mouse into the new container.  House Mouse almost escaped.  Finally, before I took the package upstairs, I wrote a letter so that the people living on the 2nd floor would know that something other than oats was in this oats container:

The note read:

Safe travels, small rodent!

(Note: the 3rd floor has caught and released 3 mice now... two larger mice and one tiny one.)

The Long-Awaited Hamster Post

Yuki and I got a hamster two weeks ago.  His name is Hurley (Hugo "Hurley" Reyes), named after the Lost character.  His older brothers at the pet store were all big and fat, so we expect him to become fat... so yeah, named him Hurley.

Hamster Habitat:

One of his little wooden chewy blocks:

And here are a couple photos of Hurley himself.  I didn't want to use a flash or too much light because hamsters like the dark, so the photos are a little blurry.  I tried to get him to sit still by giving him a large yogurt drop treat, but he promptly shoved the treat into his cheek pouches and continued running around...

Eeeeeeeeee, hamster. :)

I've taken a brief break from outdoorsy stuff to talk about great things like Easter eggs and hamsters, but next week it'll be back to outdoors and exercise, probably with a post about my new climbing gear and the upcoming Vacation of Champions!