Exploiting Small Rodents for Financial Gain

Last year my daughter took a year off from college to live in Seattle and drink coffee.  She decided to acquire a hamster.  I’m sure she believed what every potential hamster owner believes: It’s cute! And cuddly! And will keep me company!  She was already living with her boyfriend; if I were living with a girlfriend who suddenly had an overwhelming need to get a hamster ‘for company,’  I would feel a bit uneasy,  to say the least.

I could have set my daughter straight on this business of owning hamsters,  but nineteen-year-old women will own a hamster once they set their minds to it–it’s a done deal.  Back in the early nineties which doesn’t feel like it was just yesterday whatsoever,  I thought it would be sweet to get my girlfriend-unit (who is now the wife-unit) a hamster.  I did so and wrapped it up for Christmas. Okay,  I actually wrapped the cage that contained the hamster.  Okay,  two hamsters.  Siblings.  Two females to keep each company.  Had I only known.  On Christmas morning,  the girlfriend-unit saw the gift on the floor under the spot where a tree might be if we had the money,  which we didn’t.  She reached for it and hesitated.  A distinct scritching noise seemed to be coming from the gift box.  Ever since then we have been dubious of gifts that produce erratic scritching noises.  But off came the wrapper and behold:  two cute hamsters!

And so began the incarceration,  servitude and madness of the rodents.  Merry Christmas.

They were siblings, but not both female,  as we soon discovered.

“What?” said the vet. “You want me to fix your male hamster?”

“Yes,”  I replied.  “Can you do it?”

“I suppose.  Never done a hamster before.  Should be fine,  though.  Bring it in.”

After the successful micro-surgery,  we brought the groggy male home and returned it to captivity.

The male,  in fact,  was easy-going and seemed content with its lot in life.  Which was good,  as its prospects were severely limited.  The sister,  though,  exhibited what I have come to understand as typical,  neurotic hamster behavior.  That hamster hated us,  the cage,  the apartment and whoever was president at the time.  I guess that would be Clinton.  That hamster had a monomania that still astounds me twenty-five years later.  It wanted to escape.  End of story.  Never mind the fact that hamsters can no longer fend for themselves in the wild–we’ve bred it out of them. This hamster was having none it.  It was escape or die trying.

And it began hatching its evil plan during the long nights of wheel running and vainly scrabbling against the side of the cage.

My wife and I are the worst sort of liberals,  by which I mean,  of course,  the best sort of liberals.  Bleeding heart and all that.  Maybe not quite as much now as the Fires of Youth have dimmed slightly,  but still,  bleeding heart all the way.  My girlfriend didn’t like the hamster accommodations–too restricting.  “Make something bigger,”  she said.  “Come on,  you can do it!”  I could,  and so I did–a hamster palace fit even for the Donald Trump of hamsters.

But it still wasn’t enough for my girlfriend. “They need more room! Poor little hamsters!”  By this time I had begun to take a somewhat dim view of hamsters being either ‘cute’ or ‘poor.’  The female in particular was rich in sheer energy and the ability to cast a withering glance from fifty paces.  But the girlfriend-unit would have a bigger space still.  So,  we blocked off the cul-de-sac kitchen and put the opened cage in it for the night. They had the run of the kitchen,  and my girlfriend could now sleep with an eased conscience.

The next morning,  the easy-going male was curled up in the cage asleep.  The female–gone.  Vanished. The only forwarding address she left was a gaping hole in the plastic molding under the counter.  Whatever plans I had for the day were now shelved.

We pulled the dishwasher out of the counter.  We could hear the blasted rodent inside the wall on occasion,  doing what,  I have no idea.  Not much,  I’m guessing.  She was gorging herself on freedom,  that’s for sure,  but her undoing was that the wall had no food.  We set out some food and it systemically disappeared throughout the day.  Then we set out a celery stick that happened to be larger than the hamster’s bolt hole and we came upon it futilely trying to get the celery and self through the too-small hole.  Ha! Its bender had come to an end.

Both hamsters came to the usual sort of hamster end.  One got injured in a fall,  I believe,  and the other…just died. They do that.

Flash forward some decades,  and my daughter has this hamster in Seattle and then re-enters campus life the following fall.  No hamsters allowed in the dorm.  Guess who gets the hamster?

Yes.

The hamster took up residence in our living room,  and my daughter promptly acquired a whacking big cage to replace the smaller domicile in an attempt to butter up the rodent for its new digs.  But it didn’t matter.  I immediately felt a heavy deja-vu centered on the cage. The hamster was suspicious,  jittery and unfriendly.  I’d seen it all before,  and it wasn’t pretty.  I decided it was time to make this hamster earn its keep.

If you know me,  you might be aware that I come up with about three business ideas a minute,  all of them fanciful,  none good.  For awhile my attention turned to Youtube.  I’m frequently amazed at how many views videos get,  videos that utterly redefine the word ‘insipid.’  “Me,  sitting on the couch,  blowing bubble gum,  while my dog barks at nothing” –3,854,241 views.  I really really just don’t get it.  What on earth is this world coming to?  So I thought,  great! People apparently really are that stupid.  If a slob blowing bubblegum can get thirty million views,  then I with a hamster should be able to get three hundred million views,  monetize it,  and retire.  Every few days,  I’d just shove the hamster in front of the camera,  shoot a few minutes of film,  upload and collect another check.

Thus was born “The Nola Show!”

I made a Youtube channel and worked out the set and lighting and camera angles and made the spiffy intro frame you see above.  I was set! How easy would this be!  What I forgot to factor in was the hamster.

In the world of entertainment,  the adage is to never work with kids or animals.  Boy is this true,  at least for animals.  Trust me.

I turned on the lights,  started the camera rolling,  or whatever it is that digital cameras do,  and cued the hamster.  True to hamster form,  the rodent did nothing cute.  Ever.  Not even once.  ‘Stonewall’  was its motto. And also true to form,  its only goal was to escape.  Here is an on-set picture of the hamster trying to escape.

Here is another photo of the hamster trying to escape.

And yet one more of the hamster trying to escape.

Call me a quitter,  but my patience has limits,  and I soon gave up the hope of putting the hamster to good financial use.  And soon after that, we had had enough of the maladjusted fluff ball.  Onto Craig’s List it went,  and shortly thereafter was sent packing with an unsuspecting daddy and two starry-eyed,  hamster-besotted girls.  I hope the girls don’t get too disillusioned and jaded by their hamster experience,  but girls will be girls,  and that hamster is probably right now wearing a tutu and throwing daggers with its eyes.  Better them than me,  that’s all I can say.