Once upon a time in August 2005, my boyfriend bought a goldfish because his mother was always allergic to pet fur so he only had crappy hermit crabs when he was younger. The goldfish died after a day (not before he e-mailed me excitedly to tell me about it), probably because he bought it at Pet World; every time I go in there to look at the animals there are always one or two fish tanks that have two times as many dead fish per tank. That is gross and inexcusable, don't buy from Pet World.

Once upon September, he and C and V all went to Pet World after Indian buffet lunch (in the same complex) and looked at the hamsters, and within a few minutes each bought a hamster + hamster accessories.

V's was a golden male one that she named Albert (I think? An Al- type name, at any rate); it was extremely nervous, made horrible hissing/squeaking/guttural/hamster noises whenever it was not pleased (which was all the time), and died within a month, maybe from a heart attack, despite V's very motherly and kind nature.

C's was spotted brown (I think?) and named after an Agatha Christie character; it lived in his room in a huge hamster cage setup, along with the turtle Large Marge in the other side of his room; after probably four or five months, it died suddenly. Large Marge is still cold kicking it live.

Eric's was all brown with a thin white stripe from chin to belly area, and named Nestor (although until many months into her life, I thought it was "Nester" apropos of hamster nesting activities). We were really frightened that she would turn out to be a boy (it was hard to tell at first), because who wants a hamster with gigantic testicles? No one, really, because there was one at the Norfolk SPCA in the cat/bird/miscellaneous non-dog adoption area. Nestor is a girlie through and through.

But as hamsters are hard to form actual bonds with, because they are obsessed with eating and just getting the fuck out of wherever they are, even though they would so quickly be swept away and eaten if they actually LEFT their owner's house, she is still extremely jumpy and dissatisfied with her living condition. I don't blame her, because she's living in a fishtank converted into a terrarium (w/ a li'l bit of pine bedding, a wheel, a fake wood house, two bowls, chew bits, and a water bottle). But she has long been jumping up and down against the walls of the tank, hoping to get out, even after we put her in the running hamster ball for so much of the time.

When we put the fake wood house inside the terrarium, she sniffed it with caution, and then mostly ignored it. She eventually learned that she could climb up onto and stand on the roof, and then paw at the mesh wiring in the roof of her tank/terrarium to try to escape. All well and good, and sad for hamsters, but tonight she actually got on the roof, took a small section of the mesh wiring between her teeth, and then manually moved the roof of her tank off of its base.

All I want to say to her is
(1) "Holy shit! Good job, Nestie!"
(2) "I want to set you free, but the neighborhood cats/anything would eat you up in a second."
(3) "Stop it. I'm talking to you, for christ's sake."
But as she doesn't understand that there is no real reason to spread one's turds out and around terrarium pine bedding, she doesn't understand my English, and is insistent.

The point of this whole entry is that I cleaned the hamster cage for the first time (since Eric is out of the country now) and a whole new, clean terrarium (with alfalfa bedding this time) only distracted her for like two seconds.

During her waking hours, she is pretty depressing. But once she's asleep, she looks like a brown sphere with ears. When Eric brought her (+ the cage) to the beach, several people commented on how fat she was. Aren't fatties as-posed to be jolly?