Flat as a pancake

[Sputnik]

Or: Long story- short life

My son wanted a hamster for his entry for a national Science Award in March. I know this sounds awful... using a poor little hamster for a Science experiment, but bear with me. The aim was to prove that the furry little creature would find its way through a maze quicker than a human. Originally my son had designed the project around his beloved guinea pig, but some rotten kids, who had already targeted my son previously, opened her hutch one night and let her escape. So heavy-heartedly he used the other family guinea pig. Sometimes life can be very cruel and so a couple of weeks after changing the star of the show, the new star passed away unexpectedly.

Now what? When the first sadness over the departure of yet another little furry friend had eased, my son started begging for a hamster so he'd be able to complete the project. I was reluctant to begin with, remembering the nasty little bite a friend's hamster had greeted me with, and thinking of the short life span and more heartache, but when my son returned early one afternoon, having skipped Science club because "his project had run away and the replacement just went and died on him" I came home the next afternoon, new pet in tow. Edward Scissormouth, Eddie for short, was a cute little thing. Chinchilla grey, soft and black pearly eyes he moved into my son's room and soon became the successful turbo hamster speeding through the maze at the Science Awards. No price for him this time, but plenty of yummy treats.

Last week my daughter told me she had never held Eddie who lived in my son's room, door always shut to keep him safe from our three cats, she said she didn't want to like hamsters as they don't live very long. Still a few minutes later she took Eddie out of my hand and spent a few precious minutes with him. On Friday while my kids had gone swimming I decided to bravely enter my son's smelly teenage room to gather a pile of dirty washing and spotted a strange little scene on the floor... there was a small log cabin, filled with hamster bedding, a waterdish and some nibbles. Mmmmh. On closer inspection I discovered that Eddie's cage was empty. Apparently my son woke a couple of days previously to find the cage door open and no sign of the hamster. He hadn't told me out of fear I might tell him off, not thinking that maybe I could be useful in trying to find the furry adventurer. Unfortunately I was very pushed for time and couldn't spend too long searching for him that day and then we went out over the weekend so it wasn't until today, when my son had gone out to Tae Kwon Do this evening that I was able to turn the room upside down and painstakingly went through every box, drawer, pile of clothes, guitar amp etc. I had a very bad feeling, not helped by the odd smell developing in the room. Now a certain amount of weird smell in a teenage boy's room, filled with stinky socks, dirty cups and interesting stuff like that, is of course perfectly normal. But this was a new kind of smell and sure enough not too long into my detailed search I let out an earpiercing scream, that made my neighbour drop his toothbrush into the toilet (that bit is a lie, sorry, but the scream was pretty loud anyway). I told my younger son not to open the door, because was I was starring at had me shaking in my boots. I had just carefully pulled out the bottom drawer of my son's desk and there, underneath was... yup, guessed it... poor little Eddie, flat as a pancake.

We will never know if the poor little thing simply got stuck or if during one of my son's previous searches, or even my brief scoot around the room, the broken drawer had squished the ball of fluff...
Needless to say, our house tonight houses a traumatised mother and yet again a sad, abandoned budding Scientist.

"Here lies Edward Scissormouth (Eddie). Scientific Genius." (My son's planned enscription for the hamster's grave stone)

[Lee]

Ouch.. I remember my hampsters, my first ones got kicked around in a bucket and stepped on my cousins, and the other only lived a year.. Oh, those kids that targeted your son. Have your kid watch a few UFC fights, then he shall teach those bullies a lesson!

[Stefan-A]

Looking for a one-syllable word that would serve as a proper reaction. "Ouch" was already taken, so I'm going to have go with "Damn".

My hamsters.. lets just say: failures and successes.

[drache]

sorry about Eddie
hamsters seem to get into stuff, have weird accidents and weird diseases
they're tenacious little buggers tho
our hamster had a traumatic injury to the spine (probably from being dropped) and his hind-legs weren't working at all, but he still kept running on the wheel
after a while he even got some of his rear leg functions back
Christopher Reeves would have been impressed
we never have the kinds of issues with the gerbils that we've had with hamsters