Saturday Saturday 22nd July 2000
Maty the Hamster writes on how a hamster should write for the human market


[Editor's note: It's with great pleasure that we devote some space in our weekly periodical to an up and coming young writer by the name of Maty. Her contributions have, to date, been normally joint efforts in collaboration with our staff reporters but she has had one individual letter published on the occasion of Dak's impersonation by an unknown rodent a number of months ago]

There are many problems confronting a hamster when they choose to begin to write for the human market - not least the problem of how one can grip a pen to be able to achieve anything coherent on the paper in front of them - but, with the advent of modern technology in the form of computers and the latest in Squeak Recognition software, these initial problems have been largely left behind.

Having become proficient, therefore, and fairly confident with the methods of recording, the hamster has to turn their attention to the content of their writing. This is, indeed, difficult for humans just don't think in the same way as, for example, a whale might - to a whale, the desire to find seas rich in plankton are necessarily high on the agenda but, to the man and woman who walk the streets of Washington DC, the most they know about plankton is that they aren't made of wood and that they live in the sea. They really have no desire to either eat or swim in them and the literary whale must, of necessity, try to find ways of expressing themselves in the language of the reader that they seek to reach.

The problem is no different for hamsters - if you or I were to tell a fellow hamster:

'The soiled bedding is stuck with currants - Kindly get the seeds and we'll have a feast'

we would, naturally, be understood. But, to a human, meaninglessness would cloud their understanding and we would be no nearer communicating with them than we were in the days before George the Hamster came along.

So, what should we write about?

Humans have their weak spots and it isn't, perhaps, surprising that hamsters need to develop articles which associate themselves with such things. For instance, were I to attempt to get a hamster to move their butt so I could see the tv, I might try the easily understandable:

'Do you want a sunflower seed applied to your posterior?'

but, to a human, such a sentence would be meaningless. Better is the phrase:

'Wasn't that Pamela Anderson that I just heard on the landing?'

if the human is a male, or

'Did you see that? Wasn't that George Clooney that just went passed the window?'

if they're female - the latter only works, incidentally, if you live in a ground floor flat. For some reason, for which I am blissfully ignorant, males of the human species tend to be attracted to members of the opposite sex if they are so lopsided as to almost over-balance, while females prefer the 'cute butt'. This is all so illogical as to make a hamster laugh, I know - for considerations about child-bearing in females and faithfulness in males is far from their minds.

But the hamster writer, if he or she is to communicate effectively with humankind, must be aware of the differences and so word their articles accordingly. I could go on at length with numerous observations and illustrations but this, I assure you, is the only real guiding principle - all else is observation of the human species from which one can develop information that will be used towards this end.

Maty the Hamster doesn't write very often for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.





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