Saturday 12 August 2000
Dak the Hamster replies to his master's trouble with some hamster owners
My name is Dak, a ham I am, and over
two years I have breathed.
A Russian rodent - proudest stock - and what I write you must
believe.
They
feed me well and give me drink and of each substance have no lack.
I’ve spent my days in
expansive digs - I do inhabit Rotastak.
Now some would tell you that
it ain’t cool to put us in this plastic cage
But in the UK where I live, these often
simply are all the rage.
And little boys and smaller girls will buy them from the stores
that sell
Thinking that they’ll give us room to burrow, feed, walk, play and
smell.
Now Rotastak, it ain’t too
great if only stacked in one big pile
Cos Russians aren’t too great to climb
and tend to plummet from the sky.
Evolution hasn’t given the skin
extensions that act like wings
But give us a million years to change
and then you’ll see what genetics brings
Now, my owner -
name of Lee - knows that I can’t climb a cherry
And so has modified the cage and made
me ramps and bridges many.
Instead of six inch vertical drops the most I need to climb is
nowt
Because he puts in angled bends which eases climbing in and out
Some infer that hams are thick
and that we can’t cope with owt that’s round
But in the wild we make no cubes,
living in spheroids beneath the ground.
Others say that Rotastak is heat
retaining and that we faint
From heat exhaustion to the point of death - a truthful statement?
No, it ain’t.
I move nest repeatedly to
where the temperature’s the best
And if it’s warm when I retire, behind
the wheel is where I’ll nest.
Or do you think we can’t assess the difference between cold and hot?
You give
us little credit, friend, if you think we know not what.
And so my ode comes to an end
and I must say one final word -
To all those hams in tanks and cages
who live all cramped liked captured birds
Who have no tubes through which to
tunnel and drafty, wired titchy squares
When I have room to swing a cat - if I
had the strength to dare.
So, dear owner, please leave
Lee be - he cares for hamsters one and all
And never let a word be said against
this guy who’s over tall.
The life I live is full throughout and every want is fully dealt
Go write
it on my headstone, please, that ham utopia was where I
dwelt.
[Editor's note - Dak will be
following up this ode next week with a short but pithy article about hamster
cage layout and the extent to which hamster owners should give suitable
accommodation to their rodent pets]
Dak the Hamster writes for
the Rodent Weekly.
This article appears courtesy of that paper.
Visit the official Hamster Presidential web site
