Saturday 23rd September 2000
Dak the Hamster reports on a self-confession group of hamster owners


There's a certain truth behind the assertion in the human world that a pet owner can become almost identical in looks to the pet which they own. Even truth in the statement by psychoanalysts around the world that a prospective pet owner may choose a pet based upon the characteristics which they can see and identify in it as being something which are their own. Proof for such an assertion has already been well-documented and I'm indebted to Cesar dogfood for their well photographed scientific treatise on the subject, the first three photos of which I've used here.

But how much could we say that the pet owner actually becomes like the pet they own? I mean, while characteristics may be inherent within the animal that's bought, just how much could it be said that, for instance, the dog's tendency to lift it's leg beside a tree to relieve itself will be copied by the owner who eventually buys it? These are difficult questions to answer and ones which the scientific world are still struggling to come to terms with. However, lately there's been what can only described as a plague of groups appearing all over both America and the UK who meet together weekly and try to give one another support as they struggle to come to terms with their inner rodent.

I am, of course, referring to Hamaholics Anonymous, a branch of which I attended just the other week in a small suburb of Chevy Chase just round the corner from where the GFO lives. Whether the GFO was actually present or not is difficult to determine for most of the attendees prefer to wear draped hoods about their heads and put on strange voices for fear that their identity will be discovered.

As I sat at the back taking notes, a young lady rose to her feet with her head bowed - but covered - and began with the stammering admission:

'Hello, my name is Martha and I'm a ham-aholic...'

It had happened gradually, of course, as most addictions do, but it was one which was, nevertheless, tragic. She had been a successful lawyer in LA and had given in to her daughter's request for a pet rodent about two years' previously. However, on days' off when her daughter was in Summer Camp, she tried, albeit hesitantly, one of the hamster's sunflower seeds - then, a yogurt drop - and a hamster hoop - until, within a very short space of time, she was dragging her mattress around the floor to find the most comfortable position to sleep at night and pouching her evening meals to eat later in bed.

This story was typical, however, and is by no means strange.

Many of the hamaholics had also felt compelled to join the mailing list known as 1hml and to take on a hamster identity as they contributed observations and articles to the group's readership, pretending to be not just their own dear pet but other, fictitious ones, with names that were as strange as they were distressing. To one, they were 'Maty' or 'Yarash' (Gosh! Those names sounded familiar...now who was it I'd read as using them just the other day?), to another Fluffy Bernadette the hamster psychologist and, what was more alarming to me, was that there were a few Daks in the room that seemed to have associated themselves with me! I didn't blame them, it was just that I found it disturbing...

The evening was growing late and I could see the humans become fidgety, an increasing amount of squeaking going on as the night had worn on. Two brown clad hamaholics were fighting in one of the corners over a Vitacraft stick - a wild berry one, of course - while a husband and wife shared a hamster hoop between themselves in the time-honoured manner of Russians of both grabbing it by the teeth and pulling. A thin metal tube which projected from a water dispenser in the middle of the room was now being drunk from by an increasing number of attendees before they went in search of the most inconvenient place to pee over the floor and relieve themselves there.

Having returned to the relative tranquility of the Rodent Weekly Offices, I punched in 'hamaholics' in Altavista and was immediately greeted by a string of newsgroup references and web pages that expressed the liberation that had come from denying the inner rodent no longer and of going public with the obsession. One GFO - and it smacked of the GFO I knew from her last visit here - had been recorded as saying on 1hml that

'We encourage, rather than eliminate, the addiction'

something which sent a chill down my back and caused my toes to curl. Was there no end to this obsession? Was there no way to prevent innocent humans from being sucked into this cult? And what next? Would there be some mass suicidal exodus to a supposed 'Great Hamster Wheel in the Sky' as a meteor approached in some not too distant future?

I gave my head a long groom as I contemplated the problem - this was bigger than I'd thought...

Dak the Hamster writes for the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.



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