Maple

So the latest blog comes with sadness, but can be regarded as a tribute. Our hamster, Maple, died yesterday just over 2 and a half years after we took her home from Pets At Home. We hadn’t seen her for over a year as we had to leave her in the UK when moving overseas, but it’s still sad. Here are just a few stories and thoughts that she inspired.

We had um’d and ah’d for a while about getting a hamster or a pet of some sort. I’m not sure what made us decide to finally get a hamster that bank holiday Monday in May. Anyway, we had a look round Pets At Home and chose Maple. I don’t remember much about that but I do remember the trip home! They boxed her up in a small cardboard box for the ride home and all we could hear in the car was a gnawing of the cardboard. The stops at the traffic lights on the way home became more intense as we realised what a good job she was doing on trying to break out! Things never really changed from then on, she was always one to try and chew through anything!

We’d bought a large cage with metal bars that was very spacious for a small hamster. For the first few days she was so shy that she never really came out of her little cosy box home on the top platform. We were quite worried to start with, why wouldn’t she come out? Even to pee?!  And then any time we went near her she would try and bite our fingers off. I think over a week passed until she started to venture out a bit more.

Then she started to spend most of the night gnawing at the bars of the little hatch door on the side. If she wasn’t trying to eat her way out she was dangling upside down from the bars on the roof of her cage! She was entertaining to watch and kept us amused.

The metal cage wasn’t immune from escapes though, perhaps one of the reasons why she was so keen to eat away the bars was because she had previously had some degree of success from eating / pushing that door! One morning we got up and straight away noticed that the little metal hatch door was open! Uh oh! We searched high and low for her all over the room. Had she got under or around the door some how? Where could she be? Eventually I noticed some thread along the bottom of the cupboard. So we emptied the cupboard only to find that she had decided to set up home under a pile of shoes and clothes and eat Yvonne’s pashmina shawl to aide with the bedding! She did have a guilty look – one which we saw quite frequently!

We had a big canvas bag we used to keep a lot of Maple’s food in along with a few treats and the stuff to clean her cage out (which we needed to do properly at least once a week). One morning I got up to find the cage door open again. Oh no, here we go again I though! But no, she was happily sat in her little box home at the top of the cage snuggled up completely surrounded by food! The treat packets were left in the canvas bag completely emptied while the big 1 kg bag of hamster food had a hole in the bottom and was now not as full as it was the night before! At least it meant that she was probably quite happy with where she lived as she chose not to run away and find a comfy pashmina shawl again!

Eventually we decided that she had chewed too much of the paint on the bars off and there were spots of rust so we decided a new plastic cage was required. It was bright colours and lots of tunnels and thankfully she loved it. There were a couple of ‘watch towers’ at the top where she used to enjoy hiding away some food. Maple regularly ran circuits round the tunnels!

I guess it is hardly surprising that with a cleaver hamster like Maple she still managed to find a way to escape! There was the occasion – around Christmas time – while my parents were staying. We had been given a box of Mingles mint chocolates and had a few out in a dish on the side board. Early the next morning mum got up only to find maple sitting on the dinning room chair. Mum was a bit taken aback, so scooped her up and put her back in her home. It wasn’t until we got up later, heard the story and then went to check on her that we saw her grinning up at us with a chocolate covered face! It was difficult to help her get it all washed off – she had a bit of a cheeky chocolate grin for a while!

The escapes were semi-regular occurrences. One evenning when she was excersing in her hamster ball that she used to run around the house in we suddenly realised the house had gone all quiet. There was no longer the metronomic thud, thud, thud of the ball hitting the walls as she zoomed through all the rooms. Sure enough the ball was sitting quietly in the hall way with the enterance panel a few inches away from it! No hamster! Once again we searched high and low – nothing. Finally we realised she must be in the kitchen. Behind the fridge? Maybe. So we sat quietly on the kitchen floor waiting to hear a clue. Sure enough we eventually heard her scurrying away. Behind the fridge? No! Behind the plasterboard walls supporting the kitchen cabinets? Yes! and a big problem. She had found a tiny gap between some facing at the side of the cabinets and run away. No amount of enticing carrot or apple hovering above the small hole would help. We really couldn’t work out how to get her back out!  Eventually I remembered that there was a small pull away facing under the oven (where some people might store some oven tins and trays etc.). So I pulled it way and surprisingly there she was, looking straight at me with those same guilty eyes! Quick as a flash, before she could scurry away again I scooped her up and sent her home!

The most worrying time however was when the weather took a cold turn in the Glasgow area. After waking up one Saturday morning I went to check on her, as I often did. She didn’t seem to be as lively settling down to sleep as she usually did. In fact, was she even breathing? I couldn’t tell. I watched her for ages, becoming more and more worried. Surely she can’t be dead, can she? I did a quick ‘google’ and found that sometimes hamsters can go into hibernation. Perhaps the flat got too cold over night? I really wasn’t sure. Every now and again I thought I could see a small breath – but really couldn’t be sure. So we scooped her our her house and took her to the kitchen where we laid her on a hot water bottle and stroked her gently. Slowly but surely she started to breath at more regular intervals and after about 30 minutes managed to coax her back to life! Wow, what a strange experience – certainly one we never thought we’d get when we first picked her out at Pets At Home!

It was that incident that made us realise just how much we loved her – she wasn’t just cute anymore, she really did have her own personality!

We’d even taken her on a road trip down to England once. A well travelled hamster. On one of our trips though we couldn’t take her so left her with a friend that would later care for her for a year when we moved to Brunei. Which is a bit of a surprise really as while she was staying there she took a liking to the curtains and gave them a special ‘Maple’ style hem all along the bottom!

It was probably the hardest part of leaving Scotland when we had to drive her to Fiona’s and say good-bye. We knew she’d be well looked after, but also how much we would miss her.

That was the last we saw of her – although we heard a few more entertaining Maple stories and could picture well the guilty look that she would put on!

Two and a half years was a good run for a hamster she certainly gave us much more value than we expected from the five pounds! I wonder if she has managed to escape the after life yet? I wouldn’t put it beyond her!

-PlaneSimple