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squidge
24-Mar-03, 00:39
My wee boy has a hamster called Patch

Patch is 12 months old . He is, however much more hardy and adventurous than i would expect a hamster to be. I was wondering whether others have similar stories of derring do by their hamster or hamsters which are known to them.

Patch has a lovely cage with bits sticking out of it and a sleeping pod thing. When a friends yorkshire terrier knocked this off and tried to eat him Patch escaped to be found dragging his back legs one floor down. I put him in a box expecting to take him to the vets the next day only to find he had recovered fully.

Again last week Patch escaped after the dog thingie we had put him high up on a tall chest of drawers. We found his lid was open and he was missing no sign of him. The next day we were having breakfast when he appeared - very dirty - he walked out from behind the sofa as proud as proud can be having negotiated the drop from his bed to the top of the chest of drawers, the drop from the chest of drawers to the floor and a flight of stairs!!!!!!

Today he got a bath - whilst holding him he wriggled and he fell into the washing up bowl. he is none the worse for this even- - i am amazed

sassylass
24-Mar-03, 04:40
well Squidge I cannot tell a hamster story since I've never owned one, but I can tell you a true cat story.

We had this lovely dark furry cat named Heather, and she was a bit odd. She had a habit of sitting on the tiptop of our chimney, wayyyyy up high, like an perched bird, regally watching the neighborhood. One day my mother heard this strange mew mew noise, and though she looked high and low, she couldn't find from whence it came, nor could she find that darn cat. Finally, she pinpointed the fireplace, where it became apparent that somehow Heather had tumbled down the chimney and was wedged above the damper. To make a short story long, my mother enlisted the help of a long armed neighbour, who laid newspapers on the carpet and proceeded to haul out an absolutely filthy, extremely upset, but amazingly unhurt cat. If I remember right, Helen had the honour of washing that cat [lol] .

jjc
24-Mar-03, 12:08
Hey squidge,

When I first got together with my girlfriend (many, many moons back) she had a hamster, which regularly escaped and disappeared for days on end.

After one such episode we finally managed to track it down. It turned out that there was a gap in the floorboards, just big enough for said hamster to squeeze through. It would spend two, sometimes three days exploring the hidden depths below our feet and come back out when it got hungry enough – dusty but happy.

Her family had anywhere between two and five cats whilst she had that hamster (the cats came and went, the hamster stayed). No matter how hard those cats tried, they never once managed to catch that little rodent under the floorboards.

Resilient little devils, aren't they?

http://www.clicksmilie.de/sammlung/tiere/animal-smiley-081.gif JJC

Anonymous
24-Mar-03, 16:23
We had a hamster when I was a child, Squidge. When it escaped from it's cage, it would often climb all the way up the curtains, which almost reached the floor. Maybe that's a common thing for hamsters to do, but I thought it was quite an amazing feat! :cool:

Eve M
24-Mar-03, 16:33
When we went to buy our hamster, we decided on a Chinese Dwarf male. When the assistant took him out of the cage to show us, he leapt about 4ft from her hands onto a hard floor where he lay on his back perfectly still for a good few seconds. We were reluctant to take him home after that, but he was the only male the shop had left so we did.
Hes still with us after about a year, perfectly healthy.

The kids named him BUNGEE :o)

htwood
25-Mar-03, 06:16
My youngest daughter had a Chinese dwarf hamster in a small cage. We bought a RollyBall exerciser for him, cuz it seemed that he wanted to run more. It's a clear plastic ball with airholes that you put the hamster into, secure the lid, and he could run all over the house without getting lost or stepped on.
We would block the way to the stairs, but several times, we heard the sound of the ball bouncing all the way to the bottom. It never seemed to do him a bit of harm, but it surely gave me grey hair. :eek:

Drutt
25-Mar-03, 11:14
htwood - I had a hamster which did the same thing, except that it also had an instinctive desire to escape. I used to put him in his exercise ball on the landing at the top of the stairs, because it allowed him lots of space to run around in.

I'd block the stairs off with books, but if I turned my back for a minute he'd be taking running charges at the books, slowly shifting them out of the way so he could tumble down the stairs. He just knew that this would make the exercise ball open and then he could escape.

I'd suggest this knowledge made him a super intelligent hamster, except that he clearly wasn't too sharp in other respects. He used to spend about 8 hours a day running in his wheel, and at least an hour a day chewing at the plastic behind the wheel (which kept it attached to the cage). No amount of super-tasty hamster chews or wood could stop him doing this. Sure enough, one day the wheel fell off. :eek:

Never have I seen a more depressed hamster in those couple of days before I bought him a new one. I was careful to buy one with a metal attachment, so he wouldn't do it again. :roll:

After that, I could never tell if he'd actually learnt his lesson, or just realised that metal wasn't chewable.

jjc
25-Mar-03, 11:48
Drutt,

Did you ever consider that the hours spent running in the wheel were in preparation for the mad dash for freedom that would surely ensue after the books had successfully been pushed aside?

And chewing at the back of the wheel might have been to sharpen the teeth for self-defence should it be caught in escape?

Perhaps your hamster was super intelligent??? :eek:

JJC

Drutt
25-Mar-03, 13:31
jjc - super intelligent hamster? - not likely - this is the same hamster which I one day found had been consistently chewing at the lead for my radio alarm, while hiding behind my chest of drawers. Wires were exposed and he was on the verge of electrocuting himself!

Intelligent he was not, though perhaps he was suicidal after his attempts to escape failed... :confused

George Brims
26-Mar-03, 00:02
Hamster story:
A certain vet in Aberdeen (and anyone who knows me will guess who he is) once removed a tumour from the hind leg of a hamster. Being a junior vet at the time he lived in a flat above the practice. Rather than leave the recuperating critter downstairs with assorted larger patients, he took it upstairs in a small box. He didn't think it would pull through, so he was shocked to find it gone in the morning. Scratching noises behind the wall revealed it had joined the mice in there somewhere. He never saw it again... He didn't enjoy telling the owners.

Gerbil story:
We used to have a gerbil that loved to run around the house. We would let him scoot around as he could usually be tempted back into his cage with food. However one night we couldn't find him and it was getting late, so we let him stay loose. In fact he was running around for several days. Then we noticed there were balls of pink fluff under the sofa. It was a sofa bed with a box under the seat for pillows, sheets etc. There was an electric overblanket in there - yes a pink one. We pulled it out and unfolded it. Jeremy the Gerbil had burrowed into it through one corner, so there was a repeating pattern of holes when it was unfolded. This was bad enough, but he had also eaten at least a foot of the power cord. There were little nuggets of gerbil poo in there with bits of copper wire twinkling in them like tiny christmas decorations! Henceforth he was confined to solitary.

Lynz39
27-Mar-03, 13:43
True Story! I lived in Aberdeen in a flat near Pittodrie stadium. One day I decided to buy myself a hamster. My flatmate had a fit and so I had to keep him in my room nicely tucked up in his little cage. He was a grumpy brute of a thing though and used to bite like mad.
Anyway our flat was pretty cold in the winter and we had no heating. I came home from uni with one of my friends. We went into my room only to find little hamster lifeless on the bottom of the cage. My friend (who was training to be a nurse at the time) decided to practice mouth to mouth resucitation on the little fellow. She was opening his little mouth to reveal his evil sharp little teeth and blowing into his tiny lungs. She did this for about 20 mins. He did move a few times but no obvious signs of life were apparent. No luck. Dead as a door post. We put him in a tissue box and set him on top of the gas heater awating his burial ceremony in our back yard. An hour or so later, noises were heard from the tissue box. We looked inside and low and behold he was alive again. He was very weak however. My friend and I laughed hilariously as we realised that he was obviously in hibernation due to the cold. She sat holding him over the fire to warm him up. Steam started rising from his frozen little body. He ran about for ages so we put him back in his cage. The next morning he was dead (we think!!) we buried him anyway.
RIP little Hamster :~( . Nurse friend you know who you are!!!

Kenn
27-Mar-03, 23:44
Esmeralda, who has now gone to the great playground used to indulge in Hammynastics,
she would stomp out of her sleeping quarters on the upstair level of cage..go to edge of the platfrom and proceed to throw herself over hanging on by her back paws.She would swing there for some minutes doing a good impersonation of a trapeze artist and then free fall,no safety net,to the bottom of her cage.She would also climb side of cage,traverse the top hanging upside down and frequently get herself wedged between the top of the cage and the roof of her sleeping quarters..then have to wriggle out backwards.
Escapology,no problem shove the top door of cage upwards,climb out,slide down side of cage onto worksurface,over edge sliding down front of washing machine avoiding cat's plate and water bowl.YEHA freedom.However the night she disapeared completely we spent ages looking only to hear strange noises inside cooker.Take out base drawer no sign only scrabblings,she had climbed up the back where the vents are fortunately the oven was not on at the time.We tried everything tipped cooker up,removed top of vent...2.00am she decided it was time to retire and stomped out of the drawer space headed across kitchen but needed a little assistance for her ascent to bed!
Like others despite her repeated excursions somehow the cat never caught her..so just who does have nine lives?
Miss that little bundle of fun and at least my hair was already grey!

Anonymous
28-Mar-03, 00:12
Not a personal story but it made me laugh.

Mate of mine used to have a great big collie/germanshep cross and one day while it was milling about destroying bits of furniture, he noticed something white stuck to its rear.

Thinking it might be worms he moved in for a closer look.

Closer inspection showed the white thing to be a bit of polythene so he tugged at it to remove it, thinking the dog must have sat on it, only to discover that the rest of the polythene bag was attached.

So, with quite a bit of bravery i must add, he pulled the entire bag from the dog in the same sort of way a magician pulls hankies from his sleeve and the dog was fine.

Closer attention was payed from that day on as to what the dog was eating and where the polly bags were kept.

Sorry, I know its not about a hamster, but hey, close ?;o)

Eve M
28-Mar-03, 10:45
Niall, When I first started to read that, I thought you were going to say that the dog had a hamster hanging out of his butt [lol]

squidge
28-Mar-03, 12:48
LOL

Me too Eve... Me too

[lol]

Anonymous
28-Mar-03, 16:34
I used to know a bloke with an alsatian who was mad on fishing, to such an extent that he kept maggots in the fridge. One day, don't ask me how, but the dog got in the fridge and ate the maggots, sawdust and all. As nature progressed he ended up with dog **** in his garden that had maggots crawling before the flies could get there! Again nothing to do with hamsters, but they are so passe.
Paddy

amack
02-Apr-03, 14:00
Snuffles, has now snuffed it many years ago.

One day while on the uncomplete balcony ( the felt between the balcony and wall didn't meet) he thought he would try absailing but with out the rope. He thought he would invesigate only to find out seconds later the ground was coming towards him. Too late to pull back he fell to the ground. To this day I cannot beleive how lucky he was to survive with only a little cut on his nose and shock. So he recovered by sitting ontop of the couch most of the evening watching telly with us. :)

©Amethyst
10-Apr-03, 01:23
LOL!!!

I love this thread... you reminded me of my first hamster, squidge! Patch! *ta-da*

He was a rotter! My mother was the only one he'd let handle him... always bit me! he even went to bite the cat once!

When he died we burried him in a box with a label on it saying "Syrup"... so that was to be my next hamster's name... that one was burried in an adidas shoe box... so the next hamster was called adidas... and that was my last hamster, but if I get another one... I'm going to call it Malteaser. Need I explain why?

I think it's a shame letting kids have hamsters, though! They get all atatched to the rodent, and it goes and dies! :(