Dear Diary,

Today I almost killed my daughter’s hamster.

The day started out as any other day. Kate has been at my mother’s for the past two weeks and even though she is only 3 minutes away it would seem that her social schedule has not allowed her to get away for even a moment to clean out poor Sinatra’s habitat.

Cleaning out Sinatra’s cage isn’t out of the ordinary for me this summer considering I had to do it for the 16 days that Kate was on the east coast and now for the past two weeks.

I was rather smug proud of myself that I found a way to make quick work of the royal pain in the ass inconvenient task. Rather than taking the entire house apart, I simply stuck the lovely, on-board, hose attachment to my beloved vacuum, down the tube and sucked out all the old shavings, hidden food and, well, hamster poo.

Usually I take Sinatra out and put him in his exercise ball to run around while I complete the task of being his maid. This actually makes him more like real family, the fact that I have to pick up after him just like I do everyone else. Today Sinatra was being a complete bitch a little more stubborn than usual and so I left him in one portion of the tube while I sucked out the other portion.

Imagine my surprise to find out that my bagless Bissell vacuum is a little bit more powerful than I had original estimated it to be. One instant I was cleaning out his “condo” the next instant there was a “shloooop” sound and he was gone.

In what seemed like an instant I had the filters out of the vacuum and was yelling for Ethan to come help me while trying to recall what exactly one might do to perform CPR on a Siberian Dwarf Hamster. Unfortunately, we wound up cutting the vacuum hose into three pieces. To be fair, Ethan cut the hose because I was a tad bit upset over the thought of having to tell Kate that I murdered might have been responsible for the untimely demise of her hamster.

Once we had hacked the tube to bits (always careful to make sure there was nothing in the section we were cutting) we realized that he was still stuck in the long, narrow, hard, plastic “working end” of the tube attachment. (Damn you Bissell and your quality construction.) Peering into the end of the tube (right before the accordian section starts) where we had just cut I could see his furry, fat, little ass and bear-like tail.

I pulled on his tail… no response. Tugged on his back foot… he tucked it up under him, I yelped with joy and then considered sticking the handle of a screw driver or wooden spoon down the other end to kind of shove him out. I then realized that while he might make a great, natural, pipe cleaner, I probably had a better shot of really injuring him, that is, beyond the damage already done to both his health and dignity.

So, Ethan stuck his fingers down the tube, grabbed his back legs and gently pulled him out. He was limp… Ethan laid him carefully on the floor so we could get a good look at him, suddenly he sprang to life and ran down the hall in his weeble-wobble fashion. He’s pretty quick for a little fat-ass.

Now, he’s resting quietly, obviously traumatized by the whole event, and I have to go look for a replacement tube for my vacuum.

As my husband kindly pointed out, “A new hamster would be cheaper.”

Yes, but a new vacuum hose is easier on my conscience, thank you.

Related Tags: siberian dwarf hamster, Sinatra, pets, vaccuums, guilt

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