When I was a kid, we had some hampsters.

They were our pets, and as pets go, they were OK. They used to escape quite often and we would find them hiding under a bed or in a closet. I remember one long-time escapee that we finally found because he had dragged a lollipop into my closet and was crunching it at 2:00 AM.

The conversation went something like this:

*crunch crunch*

“Dad, there’s something in my closet!”

“Hush, honey, it’s just your imagination.”

*crunch crunch*

“Da-ad, there’s something…”

“Quiet! It’s time to go to sleep!”

etc.

Finally, in the middle of the night, I guess he finally heard it, too (I had finally drifted off to dream of monsters crunching on bones or somesuch) and he rescued him and put the little guy back in the cage.

Anyway, that’s not what this is about.

Another thing our hampsters did was follow each other around the habitrail. You know, the long yellow and red tubes and stuff? Well, sometimes one of them would decide to park his furry little ass in the middle of a tube. And another one would come along, and want him (or her) to move. And bite them on the butt.

Sometimes, if they were facing the wrong way, they’d bite them on the face. (Our favorite hampster had one eye, btw).

I’m feeling a bit like one of those hampsters right now. Just for being here, I’m getting gnawed on. On all sides. Things are not happy right now in the habitrail, and I don’t know what to do to make them better. Everybody hurts.

I certainly understand the temptation to escape and munch on a lollipop in the middle of the night in a closet, though.