A Costly Deja Vu

The concept of death is a difficult one for youngsters to grasp. Occasionally, Tyler and Kailey will see or hear something related to death or dying, and immediately pepper me with a million questions. What does death mean? Where do people go when they die? Do only old people die? Do you ever see people again after they die? Without fail, they also include my personal favorite – you’re old, are you going to die soon?

After a spirited debate on the definition of “old”, I end up tap dancing around the subject with poor analogies and befuddling metaphors until even I am confused, and they have forgotten their initial questions.

Sadly however, I fear that the day of confronting the realities of death might be coming sooner rather than later for them. Thankfully, everyone in the family is healthy. Even Amy, our 16 year old dog, while definitely slowing down, is still going strong.

No, it is highly unlikely that old age or ailing health will be the catalyst which forever alters my precious children’s innocent views on mortality. It will be murder. You see, I am precariously close to killing Sunshine.

To be clear, I am decidedly conflicted about bringing harm to another of God’s precious creatures. As both a pacifist and an animal lover, I am not at all happy with the thoughts currently rattling around in my head. That said, Sunshine has not left me much wiggle room. I am still not entirely comfortable with a rodent living under my roof, but the reality of the situation is that Sunshine and I have actually developed a nice little working relationship. I don’t bother her, and she doesn’t cause any undue burden on me. All was harmonious until about a month ago.

During the day, Sunshine’s cage stays in our game room. This lets her feel like a part of the family, and gives the kids easy access to playing with her when they want to. As a nocturnal animal however, she typically wakes up right as we are trying to drift off to sleep, and without fail, begins to exercise with a ferocity similar to Andrea in a cardio-kickboxing class. For those of you who haven’t seen my wife in a cardio-kickboxing class, suffice it to say that hundreds of thousands of calories are being burned.

As a result, and largely due to the fact that Sunshine’s exercise wheel – despite being advertised as “silent” and being regularly oiled – has roughly the same decibel level as a fully operational chainsaw, we have started putting her in our laundry room at night.

This has allowed us to get some sleep, while still letting Sunshine get out her obvious anger issues.

The real trouble started a little over a month ago when, with everyone quietly sleeping, I heard some strange noises in our house. Naturally, like any heroic husband and father, I immediately took action. I buried myself further under the sheets, and tried to get back to sleep.

In my defense, it was like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, so I was a little out of it. Unfortunately, the noises did not go away, and I eventually woke up and realized that something out of the ordinary required my attention.

With my bat in hand for protection against any and all potential trouble, I slowly tracked the random scraping noises to the laundry room. Heart beating at a precariously high rate, I threw open the door and quickly turned on the light. Nothing suspicious. No burglars, no criminal activity, nothing. More scraping noises drew my attention to my immediate right. Something was inside our washing machine.

It was at this point that I began putting two and two together. I noticed that Sunshine’s aquarium-style cage with a mesh metal top had a jagged hole in one of the corners.

It appeared that Sunshine, in a desperate bid for freedom, had gnawed through her roof and was now running amuck in our washer.

At three o’clock in the morning, I didn’t really know what my options were. I seriously contemplated waking Andrea and delegating the problem to her – before you judge me, remember that she was the pro-hamster advocate who vouched for Sunshine – but even I knew that would not be in my best interest. Ultimately, I chose to close the laundry room door and go back to sleep. The problem would keep until morning.

In the morning, we ultimately were able to coax Sunshine out from underneath the washer with a carrot stick. We all had a good laugh and thought that was the end of it – thought we had dodged a bullet – until later when we realized the washing machine no longer worked. 10 days and $193 dollars later, we were once again able to launder our own dirty clothes.

Apparently Sunshine, drunk with power during her escape, had decided to chew through several key electrical components, rendering our washing machine worthless. Sunshine was skating on some very thin ice.

We had every intention of replacing the top of Sunshine’s cage to ensure that escape was no longer an option, but, as is often the case, we were busy with other things and it didn’t seem like a high priority. I thought we were covered since we had eliminated her ability to reach the top of her cage, and the existing hole was being adequately covered by a large book. The setup looked a little rednecky, but from a functional perspective I felt we were good to go. Until I overheard this:

Tyler (in the laundry room): “Mommy, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

Andrea: “What is it buddy?

Tyler: “The good news is that I was going to play with Sunshine. The bad news is that she’s not in her cage.”

As value-oriented folks still stinging from the recent washer repair bill, both Andrea and I covered the nearly 60 feet from where we were to the laundry room in a shade under 2 seconds. Immediately, we noticed that, much to our surprise, Sunshine had chewed yet another hole in the top of her cage.

Believe it or not, Sunshine had climbed – and precariously hung on – her loosely hanging, round water bottle long enough to chew her way to freedom.

Angry, frustrated, and admittedly a little impressed, I began removing the front of the washing machine to check for Sunshine. Sure enough, there she was nestled in and amongst the expensive electrical components we had just recently paid through the nose for.

That day, after a lively debate on the future of Sunshine, we purchased a new cage for her. It is larger, is made of a much thicker wire, and includes many more items to entertain her so she doesn’t feel the overwhelming desire to leave.

The down side is that it does have two front doors that, if left open, provide an incredibly easy way for her to escape. I say down side because, the fairly intuitive notion of closing these doors proved to be slightly too advanced for our children.

While doing my rounds before heading to bed, I checked one last time on Sunshine in the game room and saw that one of the doors was wide open, and she was nowhere to be found. Before launching a full-scale search and rescue operation – she could have been anywhere at all in our entire house – we decided to check the washing machine.

It seemed highly unlikely to me that, given all of the options, she would head back to the washer, but sure enough, after I had taken the front off of the machine yet again, there she was.

6 days and $129 later, we once again had a functioning washing machine.

The easy thing to do would be to kill, or at least get rid of, Sunshine. Well, the killing wouldn’t be easy, but at least it would be easily rationalized. After all, she has now cost me about the same amount as my first car. But I know I can’t kill her. No, I have decided against sending her to the big exercise wheel in the sky because I don’t think it would send the right message. At some point – as much as it pains me to admit it – I have to own up to my part in each of these costly Sunshine escapades, and take some responsibility for my choices.

The truth of the matter is that we were the ones who had stopped playing with her regularly, I was the one who didn’t replace the cage after the first escape, I was the one who didn’t teach Tyler and Kailey how to shut – and the importance of shutting – the cage doors.

For her part, Sunshine was just being a hamster. A hamster of Macguyver-like independence and fortitude to be sure, but ultimately just a hamster doing what hamsters do. How can I punish her for that?

Having had a fully functional washing machine again for nearly two weeks now, I think keeping Sunshine around is definitely the right decision. Blaming her for everything and then getting rid of her would definitely provide an opportunity to teach the kids about mortality, but I don’t think it would teach them anything about personal responsibility or the importance of making good choices. That said, animal lover or not, I am most decidedly at the end of my rope with Sunshine. Any more damage to our washing machine and she will quickly find herself on Craig’s List.

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