Wednesday, November 09, 2005
A happy hamster is...
A hamster with full pouches and a wheel to run on!
I just left Tink running on her wheel. She likes to load up her pouches from her food tray, and then before she does anything else, she has to run on her wheel. Does she think she's going somewhere, I wonder? After she's run a bit, only then will she get off and hunt out a place to bury her stash. Sometimes she won't find a place she likes, and then she comes back to the wheel to run some more. Maybe, she thinks she's travelling on to a better place? Or maybe she runs on her wheel because she doesn't know what to do. Maybe she's thinking it through on the wheel. After a couple of rounds of wheel, poking-around, wheel, poking-around, she usually ends up dumping her stash in the same place she always dumps it.
Currently, that is in a pile on the top level of what used to be her little house. And she buries the rest on the bottom level of her house. You can see some of the stash behind her, in this picture. She's moved out of her house completely, it seems, and it's since become a storehouse. You'll notice from all the recent pictures that she's taken to sleeping all squashed up in one of the corners of her aquarium. Dunno why....funny hamster!Maybe I'm giving her too much credit for thinking. Maybe she just has this instinct that tells her to run! run! when her pouches are full.
I've read that some hamsters have moments of pure abandon and glee, where they'll do back flips in the air for no reason. Tink has never done that. Sometimes I wonder if that means she isn't happy. Maybe she's just demure, I tell myself. She does hang from the aquarium screen sometimes...usually when I've taken her wheel out of her cage for some reason or other. I always thought it was because she was bored...or maybe she was trying to get out...or just wanted to sniff a different stratosphere. It's hard to tell with any pet, isn't it, when they're happy? Well, except for cats, I guess, since they purr. The others, you just have to guess at.
Oh, and some people's hamsters really like rolling in sand. They seem to enjoy it, I've heard. But do they really?
Or is it just some instinct-thing? I gave Tink sand early on, but she didn't seem particularly thrilled with it. She didn't roll in it, anyhow. She peed in it once, and that was the last time I gave her sand.
I have seen her rolling in her bedding, sometimes. But then I figured maybe her back was just itchy. Maybe hamster happiness is just in our heads. Sigh! There's just no telling, is there? Oh, and I've heard some hamster-owners tell of their hamsters squeaking with joy when they were given a particular food. But again, sadly, Tink has been completely silent on the subject. And how did they know it was joy, anyway?
I have a theory about hamster-people, which I will enlarge upon some other day. But basically, I wonder if it isn't a certain kind of person...an introspective, obsessive-compulsive, creative type, perhaps?..that is drawn to hamsters. For evidence, I present to you all the hundreds of hamster sites out there on the web. In fact, I'll put a few choice links here on my sidebar. Better yet!--a page of links which substantially proves my point! You will not find such an explosion of creative energy about any other animal, I can almost guarantee it!
Ah, how I love my fellow hamster-people....
