I don't understand humans and I guess I
never will. How a cute look from a hamster can dissolve the animosity of the
hardest of characters is a pleasure to behold as sunflower seeds are stuffed
through the cage bars until cheek pouches can take no more, but some of the more
quirky traits are disturbing to say the least.
Take, for example, this free
CD giveaway that the Rodent Weekly organised last year (and which is still
running I should point out). Somewhere, on this entire hamster web site, there
are three pages at the bottom of which there's the announcement that, if the
hamster reading it is the first to email Dak, my colleague, they will be sent a
free music CD - a delightful rock album called 'Pictures at an Exhibition' by
the legendary Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
And, although the print outs
of the people accessing the web site show that each of these three pages have
been visited, Dak has not yet received so much as one email from anyone - let
alone a hamster or a human in the disguise of one.
Perhaps the humans are
frightened to let their hamsters send their details to Dak? Perhaps they think
that the CIA, FBI or MI5 are going to monitor such disclosures and intercept
them, concluding that the request for a free CD must be some sort of code for
'Send me vodka, comrade, the satellite will be destroyed in twenty
minutes'?
I've seen this before, of
course, but not in hamsters - hamsters are the prime example of what it means to
accept whatever is being handed out. I haven't met a rodent yet who won't pouch
whatever is being offered them if they can identify it as food - that's our
nature, you see, we tend to accept that the best things in life are free and
take great delight in them.
After all, we don't labour for
harvests and never toil over the growing of crops or fruit, but there's always
an abundance there for us to eat and take pleasure in.
So, it struck me that,
perhaps, the human owners are preventing their hamster pets from responding to
this genuine offer, thinking that any weirdo that reads such pages must be of
unsound mind and psychotic to the point of murderous?
But aren't the humans who read
such stuff tarring themselves with the same brush?
Humans are strange - I never
will fully understand them. But, for now, Dak sits beside his email inbox and
waits anxiously for that first hamster who might respond to the
call...
...come on hamsters - take
those security restrictions off your master's computers and email
him!
Ebony the Hamster writes
for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
Ganjette's presidential web site can be found at
http://www.hamsterforpresident.com
